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The History and Nature of Capitalism

An Evolving EBook

By Bill Geddes

Revised: 04 October 2024

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This is an evolving EBook - updated regularly to reflect recent developments in our understanding of capitalism and its exponentially growing impact on the social and natural environments which have sustained humanity through the past 10,000 years.
Minor revisions/additions occur regularly as new relevant studies appear and are integrated into the text - often as footnotes.1

All versions are regularly updated to reflect these changes.

(About this Site and Me)

Chapter Headings

  1. Introduction
  2. Ideology, The World Economic System and Revitalization Movements
  3. An Explanation and History of the Emergence of Capitalism
  4. How Born Again Christians Rescued Capitalism
  5. The Virtuous Capitalist, The Poor and the Wasteland
  6. Capitalism and Work: the White Man's Burden
  7. Capitalism and its Colonies
  8. Global economic forces, Western realities:
    From Protectionism to Neoliberal Free Markets
    Do not go gently into that dark night!
  9. Global Capitalism, Third World Development
  10. The Nature and Importance of Public and Private Credit
    Only Believe...
  11. The Looming Catastrophe: Is this the way our world ends?
    (Not with a bang but a whimper!)
  12. Participatory Democracy: It is time to Reconstitute The Commons
  13. A 'Perfect' Solution: Hypersonic Warfare
    (Is this the way our world ends?)
  14. The nature and limitations of our most vaunted capability, 'Human Intelligence',
  15. Epilogue - What Drives Western People to Commoditize their World?
  16. Addendum: We're All Equal! Independence and Exchange
  17. End Notes
  18. References
  19. Updates

End of Chapter

Chapter 1:
Introduction Return to Index of Chapters

(05/05/21) (18/08/21) (14/05/22) (24/11/22) (26/01/24) (29/02/24)

It is said that the aphorism 'Know Yourself' was inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Finding out who we are can be an unsettling experience.

Not only do human beings gild memories of experiences in their own lifetimes, they are extremely adept at reinventing those of their historical past. It can be an educative experience to strip away what the French philosopher Voltaire called the 'fable upon which we are all agreed'.

It's time we, living in capitalist countries, got ourselves into perspective 2.

Over the past three centuries, people living in Western (capitalist) countries have increasingly imposed their understanding of reality on others. Now, they are becoming aware of a growing antipathy toward 'The West' around the world. Henry Hyde's view of the problems facing Western countries is not isolated,

Let us begin by accepting there is no single enemy to be defeated, no one network to be eliminated. Al-Qa'eda is but our most prominent opponent, but its outlook is shared by many others who are equally committed to our destruction... we know now that we have permanent, mortal enemies who will seize upon our vulnerabilities to bloody us, to murder our citizens, to commit horror for the purpose of forcing horror upon us...
(US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations October 3 2001)

For the past decades the West has confronted what it perceives as a growing 'climate of terror' around the world. While estimates vary, it is reasonable to say that thousands of lives have been lost and billions of dollars have been spent in pursuing, capturing and killing those deemed a threat to the security of Western nations.

It is time to take stock. Before continuing to pursue phantoms and shoot at shadows (and, in the process, alienate thousands caught in the crossfire) we need to understand what is producing this apparently burgeoning antipathy toward Western capitalist countries.

Western capitalist nations, over the past several centuries, have attempted to re-organize the world to reflect their understanding of reality. Although we often fail to recognize it, this requires a far-reaching reorganization of people's lives in non-Western countries. It would be surprising if there was not, sooner or later, a reaction against such activity.

So, what is capitalism? What gives people living by capitalist understandings of the world such a determination to reorganize the rest of the world to their understanding? And, what impact does this attempt to reorganize the world have on people living in non-Western regions?

People living by capitalist understandings of the world have, over the past four centuries, felt driven to compel those who do not think and live as they do, to change. They have committed their lives to a refashioned world, to a capitalist world. So, what is it that has produced in Western people such a deep need to dominate and change the world?

Human beings (including members of Western capitalist nations) believe that they interact with 'objective reality', that is, a reality that exists independently of themselves and is perceived in the same way by all human beings. In every community, models are built from that assumed objective reality which, in the opinion of those who order their lives by them, provide the best ways of organizing life to make the most of the reality in which they live.

Western people hold a peculiar understanding of objective reality and believe they have a duty, a responsibility, to reorganize other people and communities to live by the understandings they hold. When people in other communities are subjected to Western capitalist demands for change, based on very different presumptions about 'objective reality', their understanding of their environment and of themselves in terms of their environment decreasingly 'makes sense'. They lose their sense of identity and self-worth as their indigenous status and prestige systems break down and brutality, despotism and corruption escalate in their communities.

Over time, people begin to realize that the problems they face and the disorientation they experience are connected to Western activity within their regions. Inevitably anti-Western sentiment grows.

We need to understand the nature of this very Western understanding of objective reality. To do so, we need to trace its emergence over the past thousand years of western European history.

Unless we do, not knowing our history, we might well, as Edmund Burke suggested, unwittingly repeat it.

This is the age of Capitalism.

In the following chapters I attempt dispassionately to explore the nature and history of capitalism 3. I leave it to you to decide whether it heralds a future of blessings or cursings.

The book starts with an examination of the nature of ideology and, more specifically, capitalist ideology. It is essential to start by examining the nature of ideological frameworks in human thought, interaction and action. This will enable us to get capitalism into contextual perspective.

With questions of the nature of primary and secondary ideology dealt with in Chapter 2, in chapter 3 we launch into an explanation and history of the emergence of capitalism in western Europe. We pose and attempt to answer the question:

This exploration takes us from the 10th century to the start of the 18th century; the century when, in western European thought, 'the economy' became clearly differentiated from 'the social', a distinct environment with its own laws and interests.

In chapter 4 we explore the century in Western European history when the turmoil of previous centuries had distilled into a new version of 'objective reality' for those who held the reins of power.

Most importantly, it was the century when capitalism gained its evangelical fervor as millions of people, threatened with economic and social ruin, became 'born-again' Christians, the 'moral majority' of Western communities.

This was the century in which they would take responsibility for transforming the rest of the world to live by the reality they now lived in - starting with their own, home grown 'savages'. It was also the century in which the justification for natural laws shifted from divine decree to the innate characteristics of environments in a self-existent natural world.

In chapter 5 we investigate how capitalism became 'virtuous'. The 18th was the century when the merchant, trader and banker moved to center stage, the period when the newly respectable, and often 'born-again', capitalist became morally and socially respectable. As Adam Ferguson, a Scottish gentleman, explained,

... in the progress and advanced state of his art, his views are enlarged, his maxims are established: he becomes punctual, liberal, faithful, and enterprising; and in the period of general corruption, he alone has every virtue, except the force to defend his acquisitions. He needs no aid from the state, but its protection; and is often in himself its most intelligent and respectable member.
Adam Ferguson (1767 Pt 3, Section 4)

It was also the century in which, as Thomas Jefferson claimed, Western Europe,

...divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. ...man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
(Thomas Jefferson, 1787)

With the distillation of a new objective reality for Western Europeans - now recognized as 'capitalism', in Chapter 6 we examine the ways in which Western European responsible people set out to ensure that the indolent, the 'lazy poor', pulled their weight and learned to work. As Western Europeans gained control of the rest of the world, it would also be time to teach 'natives' the same lesson.

In the 19th century, it was time for Western Europe, in search of resources to feed its rapidly expanding industries and needs and wants, to invade the rest of the world. By 1914 it controlled more than 80% of the earth's surface.

This was the time of European empire. The time when Western European nation-states would attempt to become global in extent. In Chapter 7 we examine the establishment of 'nation states'. Western Europe's colonies were assumed to be the 'overseas' extension of its nation states. Their acquisition and reorganization enabled Western people to continue and increase their accumulation of material wealth and expand consumption.

Finally, we arrive at the 20th century, the century of electricity, of streamlined industrial production, of capitalist control of the world. In Chapter 8 we examine the experiences of Western communities and nations as they moved from:

Following this exploration of Western economic realities in the 20th and 21st centuries, Chapter 9 turns the focus back to non-Western nations and communities and examines their experiences over the past seventy years. In the era of global capitalism, why are there so many 'failing states'?

The final five chapters deal with core issues in understanding the nature of Western capitalism in the early 21st century.

Chapter 10 examines the nature and importance of 'credit' in democratically organized and in laissez faire Western capitalist societies.

Chapter 11, entitled 'The Looming Catastrophe: Is this the way our world ends? (Not with a bang but a whimper!)' suggests that, in their drive to dominate their material and social worlds, Western capitalists have set a deeply unsustainable course into the future. They have, indeed, over the past two hundred years, myopically set about changing the world to their short-term 'advantage', discounting warnings which might require them to change their behavior. Now, it is increasingly clear that they have, finally, gone a step too far. The consequences for the world in which we live are already being written into the environments we share.

Chapter 12 examines the prerequisites for a truly democratic capitalist nation.

Chapter 13 focuses on the relationships which have developed, within the 21st century United States of America, between its president, Pentagon and the increasingly 'Western' military industrial complex.

Chapter 14 focuses on the the nature and consequences of Human 'Intelligence'. We fashion our worlds to reflect and reinforce our understanding of 'reality' and that 'reality' is community specific. It is a reality which has been historically fashioned by communities to enable their members to successfully interact with each other and with the environments in which they live. 'Multipolarity' is the Human condition which, over centuries, Western nations have assailed in a futile bid to enforce their 'reality' on the whole world.

Chapter 15 examines the nature of commoditization. It suggests that capitalism is the process of commoditizing reality. The world becomes a global marketplace where commoditized objects take pride of place. Everything can be bought and sold, and the driving force behind this buying and selling is the commoditized value of the objects, rather than their inherent use values.

Finally, Chapter 18 examines the peculiar definition of exchange which lies at the core of Western capitalism. It concludes that the economic models of capitalism are ideological models which incorporate all the most basic presumptions about the world and about human beings which are extant in Western communities.

End of Chapter

Chapter 2:
Ideology, the World Economic System,
and Revitalization Movements Return to Index of Chapters

Introduction Return to Chapter Index

(23/12/17)

Those who live in capitalist communities have, over the past century, introduced their ways of organizing and interacting with the environment to people throughout the world. In doing so, they have set about re-organizing other communities to conform to the requirements of life in a capitalist world.

Vast amounts of 'aid money' 4 have been spent in other communities assisting them to develop capitalist institutions and practices. Development experts, trained in Western 5 universities, have dedicated their lives to improving the lot of 'under-developed' and 'less-developed' communities 6. Yet, the consequences of all the dedication, effort and resources committed to 'Third World development' seem to have produced very mixed results around the world.

To understand the process of 'development' and its consequences in non-Western communities, we need to understand the ways in which people organize themselves and their surroundings.

Human Beings organize Life using Historically Constructed Models Return to Chapter Index

(19/07/24)

Human beings are natural model builders. Before they can begin to interact with their world it must be imbued with meaning and that requires a set of criteria for categorizing and classifying experiences 7, and for connecting the classified experiences with each other.

If every individual had, from birth, to invent his or her own categorizational criteria, human beings would forever be trapped at the dawning of sentience. Meaningful communication between people would be severely limited. So it should be no surprise that newborn babies are not left to develop their own criteria for categorizing experiences.

Just as human beings teach their young to speak their native language, so they teach them, from birth, the indigenous criteria for categorizing their experiences and interconnecting those categorized experiences.

The criteria used in building a community's categorizational models are historically determined. So, to the extent that the community is isolated from other communities, its categorizational models will be unique to the community (just as a community's language is unique).

This is one of the reasons why anthropologists recognize that they should handle apparent similarities between communities with extreme caution. One should never assume that 'models of kinship' or any other forms of social organization and structure can be applied across communities.

Categorizational Models are Unique to Each Community Return to Chapter Index

(04/10/23)

Consider, for example, the kinship categorization (or 'definition') of the 'elder brother' and 'younger brother' in Confucian Chinese families. The categorizational criteria that produce these related categories of persons are quite different from those that determine the definitions of older and younger brothers in, say, Anglo-Celtic Australia.

Few people in Anglo-Celtic Australia recognize the kinship elements 'elder brother' and 'younger brother' as categorically distinctive, carrying their own prescribed characteristics and sharing formalized rights and responsibilities (or reciprocal duties) that are distinctive to those two categories of persons.

Both sets of communities recognize the existence of older and younger brothers. After all, brothers, as male siblings of the same parents, exist in all communities. However, the characteristics they recognize and the relationships they presume between them are very different.

Kalman Applbaum (1998) sums up the Western understanding of 'horizontal' 8 relationships:

... [Western] individuals may be seen in relation to other individuals as free actors, free choice makers, whose unfailing goal of satisfying primordial needs and achieving the construction of self-identity are not compromised by such interferences as filial duty or custom.
(Applbaum 1998)

The chief characteristics of such persons are that they are autonomous and independent. They recognize rights and responsibilities as incentives and constraints channeling the pursuit of their independent 'needs and wants'.

The focus is on individuals attaining 'needs and wants' and the regulatory structures defining legitimate attainment of them (i.e. in economic terms - or is it œStar Trek terminology? - the 'rules of acquisition'). The focus is only secondarily on other persons (whatever their kinship relationships might be) with whom one might or might not interact in achieving one's needs and wants.

The consequences of accepting the centrality of filial and other forms of reciprocal duty, as in Confucian China, may however, (as Confucius 500 BC 9 suggested) require that individuals are not seen as free actors pursuing individual needs and wants. Rather, they should be seen as interdependent members of a community who can only understand themselves and ensure their needs and wants through understanding and accepting their kinship and other communal responsibilities.

Confucius summed up the major formal focuses of reciprocal responsibility (which provide templates for other focuses of reciprocal responsibility10) in traditional China like this:

The duties of universal obligation are five and the virtues wherewith they are practiced are three. The duties are those

Those five are the duties of universal obligation.

Knowledge, magnanimity, and energy, these three, are the virtues universally binding. And the means by which they carry the duties into practice is singleness.

Some are born with the knowledge of those duties; some know them by study; and some acquire the knowledge after a painful feeling of their ignorance. But the knowledge being possessed, it comes to the same thing. Some practice them with a natural ease; some from a desire for their advantages; and some by strenuous effort. But the achievement being made, it comes to the same thing.
(Confucius 1893)

'Unity in diversity' and 'harmony without uniformity' presume a shared 'universe' within which all entities are united.

At heart, the 'duties of universal obligation' presume two mutually reinforcing qualities or characteristics:

A deep and constant unity of all involved which pervades the whole of which individual entities are expressions; and

the separate identities of all involved, expressed through the reciprocal rights and responsibilities which guarantee 'harmony without uniformity': that 'unity in diversity' which binds all together.

To understand the nature of any reciprocal relationship (such as 'between sovereign and minister';... 'those belonging to the intercourse of friends') one needs to realize the essential, subliminally presumed unity of those involved.

It is that essential unity which underpins the necessary reciprocal rights and responsibilities which ensure the separate, unique identities of interacting individuals, groups and communities. Individual entities are defined by the particular qualities they share stemming from 'the duties of universal obligation'.

And, of course, the presumed reciprocities expressed in social relationships are always culturally specific, there is no universally defined set of reciprocities infusing 'human' relationships. As Zhang Lihua says, 'the cultural values of a country [and of its constituent communities] influence its national psychology and identity'

If a Western person is not aware of the very different relational presumptions built into Confucian ideas of reciprocal duty, he or she is likely to presume that the independent pursuit of needs and wants is central to involvement in such relationships.

Robert Westwood does this when he sums up the Confucian position from a Western perspective. He assumes that all individuals are 'free actors' who 'lose freedom' when they are required to accept super-ordinate or subordinate hierarchical status. It is this that allows him to speak about relative 'power' in hierarchical, interdependent relationships:

Challenges to authority and the 'natural' order are not countenanced. This is encapsulated in the Confucian precepts of the so-called 'Five Cardinal Relationships' or wu lun, which delineate a hierarchical power structure over key societal relationships. The wu lun are dyadic sets of unequal, mostly hierarchical relationships between emperor - minister, father - son, husband - wife, older brother - younger brother, friend - friend.

Although the power structure is differentiated and unequal (except for the latter), mutual obligations and reciprocities are inherent in the relationships. The person in the dominant position expects and receives obedience, deference and compliance, but in return should respect the dignity of the lower party and provide appropriate care and concern.
(Westwood 1997, p. 459)

Tsui, Farh and Lih, however, sum up the differences in the following way:

... Chinese often view themselves interdependent with the surrounding social context, and it is the 'self in relation to other' that becomes the focal individual experience. This view of an interdependent self is in sharp contrast to the Western view of an independent self.

The latter sees each human being as an independent, self-contained, autonomous entity who (a) comprises a unique configuration of internal attributes (e.g. traits, abilities, motives, and values) and (b) behaves primarily as a consequence of these internal attributes (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

This divergent view of self has implications for a variety of basic psychological processes (e.g. cognition, emotion and motivation) and may be one of the most fundamental differences between the East and the West in social relations.
(Tsui et al. 1997, p. 59)

Jerry Grey, a British-born Australian living in China since 2004, gives an enlightening explanation of some of the implications and consequences of 'this fundamental difference between the East and the West in social relations' in a video presentation entitled

œWhat is 9/9/6 and why does it cause so much consternation in the West?
The œtranscript of the video is available here. As he concludes:

China is different to the west, people outside of China who don't understand this will complain and suggest that China is wrong to do this but the bottom line is that most of the people who do it in China do it for a reason and probably wouldn't change it even though they could.

A commenter pseudonymed azharidris7092 expanded on this:

...this applies to all countries in the Asian pacific.. the level of twisted narrative by the west that has been [hurled] at the Asian pacific to belittle the Asian is quite nauseating.. another thing that make me sick is they also associate a certain type clothing with backwardness.. in Malaysia and Singapore some Chinese women walk around in what looks like pajamas.. they interpret this as the Chinese can't afford proper clothing.. I personally know a millionaire who walks around in flip flops and t shirts.. cultural detail like these should be taught in western schools..

Models have Unique Combinations and Qualities of Relationships Return to Chapter Index

The categorizational models held in different communities not only have distinctive sets of categories and idiosyncratic placement of elements within categories, they also have unique combinations and qualities of relationships through which categories and their elements are interconnected.

It is very easy for a researcher or commentator to apply his or her own understandings of the nature of relationships to those observed in other communities. Westwood (1997) does this when he assumes that hierarchical relationships must involve dominance and subservience, relative power and powerlessness.

These are features of relationships between individuals who define themselves as 'free actors'. They see relationships of dependence in terms of costs and benefits and degrees of loss of independence11.

The independent self is quintessentially Western. The interdependent self, in one guise or another, is found in communities where individuals know who they are through the forms of relationship they recognize between themselves and other members of the community. They perceive rights and responsibilities as qualities of the interactants rather than inhering in the 'objects' of interaction (as rules of acquisition).

In such communities the rights and obligations of individuals in exchange relationships remain with the interactants rather than being attached to the objects of exchange. So, the other party in an exchange is the focus, rather than the needs and wants of the interactants.

In one case, the process of exchange (or interaction) tends to emphasize the separate identities (and, therefore, motivations) of the exchangers (leading to a stress on independence). In the other, it tends to emphasize their relatedness and reciprocal responsibilities (stressing interdependence). The qualities of the relationships invoked in exchange in the two orientations are very different.

Such interactional orientations tend not only to 'flavor' recognized relationships between people but permeate relationships connecting both elements within categories and categories themselves throughout the primary ideological frames (see 'Primary ideology' - below) of the communities. Not only are perceived relationships specific to communities, so too are the perceived qualities that inhere in relationships.

By definition, two individuals living in different communities will, therefore, have quite distinctive 'understandings' from each other. How similar their understandings are will largely depend on the nature of the historical connections that have existed between their communities and the degree to which the hegemonies 12 of their communities have interacted over time 13.

Throughout their lives, people in communities are constantly corrected and disciplined whenever their interactions or their understandings do not conform to those considered accurate in their community. To quote Confucius, 'some acquire the knowledge after a painful feeling of their ignorance' through a process of 'teaching and learning'.

In order to understand the ways in which communities build their categorizational models and then from them construct models of community organization and individual interaction, we are going to address two related sets of structures. These determine how human beings, in any community, see 'reality' and then organize their communities in the 'best possible ways' to make the most of the reality they live in.

Primary ideology Return to Chapter Index

The first set of structures is the set of categorizational models that all members of a community (or set of related communities) hold in common. If they did not hold these models in common they would find it very difficult to make sense of each other's organization, interaction, behavior and communication. We are going to call these fundamental organizational models primary ideology.

Processes of categorization require frameworks of categories and rules (in language these would be called 'grammars') for both the placement of elements of experience in those categories and the interconnection of the categories and of the elements of experience contained in them. The interconnections are, of course, 'relationships'.

Not only are the categories and the framework of those categories unique to a community (or set of related communities), so are the sets of interactional relations and the 'qualities' that are invested in those relations.

The criteria that produce both the categorizational framework and its internal categories and relations are primary ideological presumptions. These are the most basic understandings people have of their worlds, in terms of which categorization proceeds. Any attempt to alter these understandings attacks the ability of people who hold them to think, and therefore to interact meaningfully with their environments.

Most people, when asked to explain their understanding of primary ideological presumptions, find it very difficult (just as they find it difficult to explain why they place words in a particular order in their sentences or why certain words should always, never or only in certain contexts appear together).

One of the features of the presumptions is that they are taken for granted. Those who hold them often find it difficult to identify their features and usually presume that they are so 'self-evident' that they need no explanation or justification.

This makes it very difficult to research primary presumptions since people, anywhere, will consider questions related to the definition of the assumptions to be inane. One should not question the obvious, particularly when the people being questioned find it difficult to express their understandings or even focus on the issues being raised.

It needs to be remembered, however, that primary ideological presumptions are not universally held understandings of the world. They are the understandings that are required by the most basic categorizational models of the community. So, not only should they not be questioned, they cannot easily be altered. Changes in such assumptions occur over hundreds of years and produce strains and tensions in communities experiencing the changes 14.

People in any community inherit the primary ideology of their community in the same way that they inherit the language of their community. It is taught to them from birth or as Confucius put it 'some are born with the knowledge...'.

Every time a child makes inappropriate connections between objects, people or experiences, those around the child, who feel responsible for its upbringing, correct the child. They are ensuring that its 'understanding' (i.e. its sets of categories, categorization within those sets and their inter-relationships) of the world approximates the understanding of the world held by the responsible people in the community (members of the hegemony).

All communities develop a range of acculturative processes and structures squarely aimed at ensuring that the primary ideology of the community is learned. People, throughout their lives, live by and conform to the presumptions of the fundamental categorizational models of their community. Even trivial deviations will be subjected to correction, in much the same way as people are corrected when their speech patterns deviate from accepted practice in their community.

Where the models are not held consistently or life is not organized in ways required by the primary ideology of the community, those involved are usually defined as socially or mentally defective in some way. They are, to one extent or another, in need of re-education or 'correction'.

Those who do not readily respond to correction are often considered dangerous - very often isolated from the rest of the community, or even killed (especially when community cognitive models are under attack and people feel a need to reassert the fundamental certainties of life, as in the revitalization movements we will consider shortly).

For some three to four hundred years Western Europeans became increasingly aware and fearful of the effects of madness as the fundamental presumptions of their primary ideologies were challenged and altered15. As Laura Nader put it:

Foucault (1967) demonstrates how changes in the concept of madness led to changes in diagnosis and treatment of the insane and of social attitudes toward them. He describes how changing perceptions of madness in parts of Western Europe from the medieval times to the end of the 19th century led to the separation of 'mad' persons from the rest of society, their classification as deviants, and finally their subjection to social control. He focuses on the cultural controls that led to the social controls; ideas about madness led to asylums for the mad.
(Nader 1997, p. 719)

In any community, members are certain that their primary ideology is not simply a set of categorizational models but is, in fact, the way the external world is ordered. After all, they have viewed and interacted with their world through that model since birth. Whenever something in the 'real' world seems not to fit their models (i.e. their understanding) they, usually subconsciously, change it so that it does. (This is what Westwood (1997) does in his description of relationships in Confucian Chinese communities.)

There is a continuous, but subliminal ideological management of reality. So, whenever people in a community investigate the 'real world' to see whether it fits their most basic understandings of life, they, inevitably, find that it does. As Nader says of the ways in which people understand 'the body' in different communities:

Images of the body appear natural within their specific cultural milieus.
(Nader 1997, p. 719)

The primary ideology of individuals and communities is fundamental to the way they think and understand themselves and their worlds. They instinctively apply their primary ideological presumptions in classifying new experiences and objects. Human beings, in applying their primary presumptions to new phenomena, inevitably reorganize 'reality' to fit their models rather than reorganizing their models to fit 'reality' (i.e. they act to conserve their understanding of their world and themselves) 16.

Secondary ideology Return to Chapter Index

The second set of structures is derived from the common primary ideology of members of a community. These structures start from the presumption that the primary ideology is not a subjective set of categorizational models held by members of the community. It is the way the external world is organized, it is 'objective reality'.

The purpose of this second set of structures, which we will call secondary ideology, is to spell out the best possible ways of organizing community life, given the constraints of 'objective reality'.

There can be any number of secondary models in a community. What they all have in common is that they take the primary ideology and its presumptions, from which they are built, for granted. It is the unquestioned, organized, backdrop to life.

This second level of model building, as Claude Levi-Strauss explained, is not only designed to ensure that communities are organized and individuals interact in the 'best possible ways'. It is also designed to reinforce and perpetuate the fundamental features of their primary ideologies. According to Levi-Strauss:

[C]onscious models... are by definition very poor ones since they are not intended to explain the phenomena but to perpetuate them. Therefore structural analysis is confronted with a strange paradox well known to the linguist, that is: the more obvious structural organization is, the more difficult it becomes to reach it because of the inaccurate models lying across the path which leads to it.
(Levi-Strauss 1963, p. 282)

Many of the 'explanatory' models of communities confirm Levi-Strauss' observation. They affirm and reinforce the central presumptions of the primary ideologies of the communities in which they are built 17.

Community members 'instinctively' understand, and are cognitively committed to the basic presumptions upon which the secondary models in their community are built. They can readily weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of the secondary models available to them and so choose which of the models they will support and which they will oppose.

This, in Western communities, is known as 'political', 'social', 'economic' or 'religious' (or any mixture of these) deliberation, debate or activity. These are the models of which community members are conscious and about which they enter into dispute with and support one another.

It is taken for granted by those who espouse a model and organize life by it that their model is all about organizing the real world to maximize benefits to community members and protect the most important basic principles of life in their communities (the fundamental presumptions of their primary ideology). It is the other models, those they do not endorse, which are defined by them as 'ideology'. As Philip Williamson explains of the British conservative movement of the late 20th century:

Conservative politicians, intellectuals and publicists confused matters by denying they had any such thing, whether ideology, creed or doctrine; their concern was the real and the practical, 'ideology' being an infection among their opponents which it was their task to resist.
(Williamson 2003, p. 270)

In Western communities, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there is one dominant secondary ideology - capitalism, with a variety of derived models that offer variations on the major themes of capitalism 18.

People in Western communities, convinced that their dominant secondary ideologies are not ideologies but are the best ways of organizing objective reality, have imposed and continue to impose them, often with considerable force, on the rest of the world. This set of imposed Western secondary ideological models underpins and constitutes the world economy, perpetuated and reinforced by the almost irresistible hegemonic forces of globalization.

This imposition of Western secondary ideological models on non-Western communities (which have very different primary ideologies) leads almost inevitably to their disruption. Since human beings require a primary ideology in order to think and interact with their worlds, the imposition of secondary models which do not fit their primary ideological understandings, leads to mental and social confusion.

However, both those imposing the new models and those on whom they are being imposed do not recognize the existence of primary ideological models. Both assume that the dominant and apparently 'successful' Western secondary models are the most efficient and 'practical' ways of organizing a shared objective reality.

So, it is assumed, the problem for the victims of this hegemonic imposition is one of lack of 'education' and/or lack of 'discipline'. They, therefore, sponsor and accept educational and restructuring programs (which are based on the primary ideological understandings of the hegemonic powers) to tackle the burgeoning chaos. This exacerbates the problems of social and mental confusion in the receiving communities.

Many communities around the world, suffering the consequences of enforced reorganization of their worlds to fit the requirements of capitalism, are in various stages of disintegration - victims of the globalizing forces of international capitalism. As œWallerstein (1991) claimed, the imposition of economic organization and activity on the rest of the world by Western nations is not new.

Since the 16th century Western Europeans (and those First World countries that have their hegemonic roots in Western Europe) have become increasingly militarily dominant around the world. They have required the rest of the world to accept reorganization of their models and understandings. In doing so they have established and maintained a 'world economic system'.

World economic system Return to Chapter Index

To understand the ways in which people live and organize their lives in the early 21st century we need to understand the nature of this world economic system. Unless we do, many of the most important influences on the lives of people in communities will be missed or misinterpreted.

Over the past fifty years there have been many attempts to explain the presence of this system. As Immanuel Wallerstein (1991) has said:

its peculiar feature is that it has shown itself strong enough to destroy all other [world-systems] contemporaneous to it.

In this article, Wallerstein provides a brief discussion of the nature of the 'world-system' as he understands it. His article is a response to an earlier article by Andre Gunder Frank, which was, itself, a critical response to a 1990 article by Wallerstein.

Wallerstein says that his 1990 article œ'L'Occident, le capitalisme, et le systeme-monde moderne' was written as a rebuttal of the belief that the world-system is an 'economic miracle' of Western industrialism. He says, those who claim this:

believe two things simultaneously: (a) something distinctive occurred in (western) Europe which was radically new somewhere in early modern times; (b) this 'something' was a highly positive or 'progressive' happening in world history. My position is that (a) was true but that (b) was distinctly not true.
(Wallerstein 1991)

Capitalism is based on an individualized, status-driven, open-ended accumulation and consumption of goods and services, requiring open-ended production. The basis for social status and self-definition in Western communities is peculiar. Systems of status and self-definition in other communities are equally peculiar to them.

Imposition of Western secondary models: The breakdown and revitalization of communities Return to Chapter Index

Feudalism, while unique to medieval Europe, shares many of the characteristics of patron - client forms of communal organization and interaction around the world. It was a territory-based, patron - client system in which those higher in the hierarchy took responsibility for those below them. They 'parented' those who depended on them.

Feudal communities presumed an 'interdependent self' rather than an 'independent self'. The political organization directly mirrored the social system, and councils of people of similar hierarchical position met to determine affairs of their dependents 19.

On the other hand, capitalism is based on individual independence; the acquisition of an ever-expanding set of needs and wants and promotion of the individual rather than his or her responsibility for dependents. Its political frame, therefore, is democracy.

If one insisted on a feudally organized community accepting democracy as its political frame, this would directly undermine the 'parenting' responsibilities of hierarchically superior members of the community.

Democracy requires communities to be organized in terms of an 'independent self', not an 'interdependent self'. It is no more a universally applicable model of governance than is feudalism, and when communities are compelled to reorganize in 'democratic' ways, all their other understandings of life are automatically challenged.

If, in patron - client organized communities, those in superior hierarchical positions were freed from their parenting responsibilities, those who depend on them would find the world a very insecure and inhospitable place. Far from improving the lot of the poor, the imposition of democracy can disenfranchise them and strip them of those supports that have protected them in the past. Interdependent relationships are disrupted, redistributive processes dismantled, and poverty, anomie and violence escalate in their communities.

Thomas More (1516), in his book œUtopia, described the consequences of such disenfranchising of the peasantry of England in the early 16th century, during the shift from feudalism to capitalism. The hero of his book, Raphael, was the guest of the 'Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal, and Chancellor of England':

One day when I was dining with him there happened to be at table one of the English lawyers, who took occasion to run out in a high commendation of the severe execution of justice upon thieves, who, as he said, were then hanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty on one gibbet; and upon that he said he could not wonder enough how it came to pass, that since so few escaped, there were yet so many thieves left who were still robbing in all places.

Upon this, I who took the boldness to speak freely before the cardinal, said there was no reason to wonder at the matter since... 'The increase of pasture,' said I, 'by which your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men, and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good.

They stop the course of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches, and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them. As if forests and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places into solitudes, for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his country, resolves to enclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners as well as tenants are turned out of their possessions, by tricks, or by main force, or being wearied out with ill-usage, they are forced to sell them.

By which means those miserable people, both men and women, married and unmarried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families (since country business requires many hands), are all forced to change their seats, not knowing whither to go; and they must sell almost for nothing their household stuff, which could not bring them much money, even though they might stay for a buyer.

When that little money is at an end, for it will be soon spent, what is left for them to do, but either to steal and so to be hanged (God knows how justly), or to go about and beg? And if they do this, they are put in prison as idle vagabonds; while they would willingly work, but can find none that will hire them; for there is no more occasion for country labor, to which they have been bred, when there is no arable ground left.

One shepherd can look after a flock which will stock an extent of ground that would require many hands if it were to be ploughed and reaped. This likewise in many places raises the price of corn.'
(More 1516)

A major problem in Third World (and, increasingly, in 'developed') countries is now not simply the grinding poverty of the poor, but the continuing costs of the conspicuous consumption of the rich. The imposition of forms of democracy (based on presumed independence rather than interdependence) and economic organization required by the world economic system have reduced increasing numbers of people in Third World countries to penury, with diminishing political, economic and social protection.

The imposition of democracy has been responsible for dismantling traditional forms of land tenure and utilization. It has eroded and disrupted social organization and communal support mechanisms.

In patron - client systems of governance it has disrupted the parenting responsibilities of hierarchically superior members of the community. This, in turn, has allowed those in positions of responsibility to accumulate wealth with less and less acceptance of patron - client responsibilities for former dependents (i.e. for redistribution of goods and services). 20

There has been a considerable inflation of expectations and a very great increase in conspicuous consumption amongst some groupings in non-Western communities. This inflation of the material requirements of status positions is in many ways, though not all, similar to that which occurred in Western Europe from the late 15th century with the denial of hierarchical feudal responsibilities by those who controlled resources 21.

The effects of the 'trickle down' development policies of the 1960s and 1970s show how readily the requirements of status positions can be inflated. Particularly those which are primarily determined through non-economic criteria but reinforced by the acquisition and/or consumption of material goods and services.

One of the unfortunate consequences of the 'trickle down' policies of Third World Development projects and programs and the 'globalization' activities of the past 50 years has been that high-status people in many Third World communities have had the material requirements of their positions greatly inflated by the massive injection of capital into their countries.

Since they were not primarily geared to Western forms of open-ended production 22, the injected capital was diverted into existing social template activity and those of high status found themselves able to buy Mercedes Benz cars, live in mansions, have overseas assets, and engage in many other forms of excessive conspicuous consumption. Over the past half century the ownership and consumption of these luxury goods has become institutionalized.

As the injection of outside funds dried up with the failure of 'trickle down' policies, those who require these possessions to underscore status have had to find other sources of funds to obtain them. This has resulted in a 'trickle up' effect. Those of low status, dependent on high-status people in a variety of ways, have, through lowered wages, decreased returns on produce, decreased welfare support, and increased pressure on land and other income generating possessions, borne the brunt of the inflated expectations of elites.

In many non-Western communities and countries, as a result of the 'development' activities of the past half century, the relationships between lower and higher ranks of hierarchically ordered systems of status and community organization have become severely distorted. By insisting on the 'democratization' of communities run by 'dictators', the lowest ranks of hierarchical systems have effectively been disenfranchised 23.

In almost all traditional patron - client systems wealth initially flows from the base (the peasantry in feudal Europe) upward through the hierarchy, creating concentrations of wealth in the higher reaches of the pyramid. Patrons, having accumulated wealth, take responsibility for the well-being of those below them, redistributing goods and services as needed and, in doing so, ensuring the continued and strengthened interdependence of patrons and clients in the hierarchy.

When such communities are 'emancipated' by Western development enthusiasts, the land and resources, having been vested in the upper reaches of the hierarchy, become their possessions and clients find themselves no longer entitled to the land and resources on which they have always relied. The lowest rankings of status hierarchies therefore find themselves facing very similar problems to those faced by the peasantry of Western Europe during the transition from feudalism to capitalism 24.

Revitalization movements and fundamentalism Return to Chapter Index

The consequences of this impoverishing distortion of status requirements and erosion of communities have been profound. The primary ideological presumptions of many non-Western communities have been challenged and organizational features of their secondary models dismantled.

Increasing numbers of people see the growing problems of their communities and uncertainties of their individual lives as stemming from Western-based activities in their countries and involvement of national leaders in Western forms of organization, activity and consumption. Eqbal Ahmad, in 1996, gave vent to his opinion of Western involvement in Muslim regions:

Our first encounter with democracy was oppressive. Democracy came to us as oppressors, as colonizers, as violators. As violators, they spoke in the language of the Enlightenment and engaged in the activities of barbarians ....

Historically the United States has spoken of democracy and has supported Somozas, Trujillos, Mobutu Sese Seko, Suharto of Indonesia, the Shah of Iran, Zia ul Haq of Pakistan ....

Therefore, our first experience with democracy was one of outright oppression, and our second experience with democracy was one in which [the West] promoted fascism, global fascism in some cases 25.

They perceive the breakdown of law and order and the escalating violence that surrounds them largely as a consequence of Western intrusion and influence in their countries and communities.

Inevitably, as the perceptions crystallize, resentment of and resistance to Western forms of organization and activity mount. This, in turn, is reflected in Western attitudes and Western peoples become increasingly aware of a world of:

mortal enemies who will seize upon our vulnerabilities to bloody us, to murder our citizens...
(Hyde 2001).

Having lived through the second half of the 20th century in Western countries, with their increasingly hedonistic biases, I am impressed by the mounting fundamentalism of both Western and many non-Western communities. When life becomes increasingly difficult and apparently dangerous, then communities and individuals search for the reasons and for ways of reasserting order and security in their worlds.

People in the later medieval period in Western Europe became aware of, and increasingly vociferously denounced corruption and simony in their communities 26, leading to the 16th century reformation wars. Similarly, very commonly, the problem in non-Western communities is seen as 'corruption': the loss of morality and/or commitment to the central principles of life in their communities.

The answer is seen to lie in determination to 'reform' their communities, to reaffirm and recommit themselves to the most important fundamental understandings of life, the central presumptions that underpin and give coherence to their primary ideologies, spelt out in one or more sets of secondary ideological models.

When those presumptions that are central to people's lives are perceived as being threatened, people everywhere reaffirm their commitment to the values which they know are necessary to ensure that life remains secure and ordered. They very readily become involved in activity aimed at reinforcing the forms of organization, interaction and understanding that are required by the fundamental presumptions of their primary ideologies.

They attempt to revitalize both communal and individual life. Inevitably, they do so through commitment to and enforcement of secondary ideological models derived from their primary ideological presumptions. These models are usually developed and promoted by a charismatic leadership, which demands and obtains from the bulk of the population unswerving loyalty to the principles of the espoused secondary ideology.

In writings on the late medieval world of Western Europe, the revitalization models and the movements associated with them have been referred to as 'The Reformation'. Their leaders were, almost without exception, identified with religious causes.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, examples of such movements abound in both Western and non-Western communities and countries: from the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Taliban (identified as religiously motivated); to George Bush in the United States in its early 21st century commitment to rooting out terrorism around the world and reaffirming and reasserting Western values wherever they appear to be under challenge.

Revitalization and dissident groups Return to Chapter Index

The fact that the revitalization leadership promotes a particular secondary ideological model means that, however committed the bulk of the population might be to that leadership and the requirements of the model it promotes and protects, there will always be opposition from community members holding alternative secondary ideological frames.

Outside forces can, and do, exploit those minority groups in attacking the legitimacy of the movement. This, in turn, can result in the oppositional groups being considered in league with immoral, corrupting external forces.

Khomeini (1979) provided an excellent illustration of this when he described the emergence of factions within Iran, promoted and supported, he claimed, by foreigners:

[U]nfortunately we see that some differences are created within the opposition, that is between the secular and the Islamic factions. I must point out that the origin of these parties which have appeared in Iran since the beginning of the constitutional revolution, as one understands it, is that they were, without themselves knowing it, founded by foreigners, and some of them have served the foreigners...

When the foreigners see that there are people who are useful (for the country), people who, it is hoped, will be able to reform the country, they use all their energies to set them against each other; consequently, these people quarrel with one another, each one's writings oppose the other's, and they reject one another's ideas.

Some of them have done such things knowingly and were the primary agents of the foreigners, while others were not aware of what was happening, were not aware that they were being dragged down a road which went against the interests of their own country.
(œKhomeini 1979 - accessed 26th July, 2010)

The 'Coalition of the Willing', comprising the United States, Great Britain and sundry camp followers, in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq (2003 - ...), and in its fomenting of opposition to the fundamentalist leadership in Iran, has exploited such dissident groups.

However, to conclude that these dissenting groups are committed to Western secondary ideological principles, as many commentators in both the United States and other Western countries have, leads to unrealistic presumptions about the consequences of backing their overthrow of fundamentalist regimes 27.

They also build their secondary ideological models from the basic presumptions of the common primary ideological frame which informs the models of the revitalization movement they oppose. They might, in order to win and maintain support from outside forces, speak the language of those forces from which they want support. However, it is foolish and naive to believe that the rhetoric employed for this purpose is indicative of the principles and models they are committed to promoting.

This failure to realize that the motivations of opposed factions within a country are derived from their particular understandings of themselves and the world is not recent in Western engagements with the rest of the world. It underlies most Western support of particular warring factions against others since the dissolution of Western empires following World War II.

A great deal of the Western literature on the Western invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrates this continued presumption by commentators. They assume the commitment of dissident groups within those countries to the fundamental capitalist principles of the countries they are courting for support.

Non-Western revitalization movements Return to Chapter Index

Among the many non-Western revitalization movements of the past fifty years one must include both the fundamentalist movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran from 1979 and the Taliban movement of Afghanistan in the 1990s. In one of his 1979 speeches Khomeini described those who supported the Shah and would try to reintroduce Western ideas to Iran:

Xenomaniacs, people infatuated with the West, empty people, people with no content! Come to your senses; do not try to Westernize everything you have!

Look at the West, and see who the people are in the West that present themselves as champions of human rights and what their aims are. Is it human rights they really care about, or the rights of the superpowers?

What they really want to secure are the rights of the superpowers.
(œKhomeini 1979 - accessed 26th July, 2010)

Revolutionary Iran became an enemy of nations and communities that have their hegemonic roots in Western European history.

The United States, with Western European and Soviet support, fomented a war between Iran and Iraq, and supplied both weaponry and military training to Iraqi forces. For ten years revolutionary Iran endured a prolonged and savage war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in which deaths, on both sides, numbered more than a million people.

It is the nature of revitalization movements that they often go to extremes. Those involved feel deeply threatened by 'corruption' within and by outside forces that promote immoral values and threaten their security and well-being.

They root out immorality among their own people and introduce often draconian measures to ensure compliance with the central presumptions of their moral code. They look for traitors - the enemy inside the walls - and attempt to weed them out. In the process there is, all too often, great human suffering.

So long as the threat of outside intervention continues to be perceived as real, hard-line fundamentalists gain a ready audience and strong support from the populations they lead.

Western leaders are as driven by their understandings of reality as are the leaders of non-Western revitalization movements. They are just as committed to protecting and reinforcing what they see as the most important fundamental principles of life. These Western understandings are often identified by non-Western revitalization leaders as forms of corruption against which they must fight.

All-too-often, Western leaders react to the resulting extremes and make the perceived threat a reality - as happened to Iran from 1980 to 1989 (and is now happening again) and as happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan in the first decade (and more) of the 21st century.

When they do so they ensure that the fundamental extremism they oppose is prolonged and strengthened. As the perceived threat from outside forces diminishes and the revitalization leaders become increasingly secure in their leadership, fundamentalist movements tend toward moderation 28. Max Weber (1947) described this process as the routinization of charisma.

Western commentators all-too-often misread that moderation as Westernization and trumpet the downfall of 'extremist leaders'. The ultimate democratization of Iran is an almost universal theme in Western literature dealing with the liberalizing tendencies in Iranian society (i.e. the processes of routinization) 29.

Western revitalization movements Return to Chapter Index

(23/04/17) (26/03/19) (27/09/19)

The Western preoccupation with terrorism in the early 21st century is a fundamentalist reassertion of basic Western values. So is the declared determination to stamp out terrorism and reimpose 'democratic' principles of social and political life on those countries and communities that display or encourage anti-Western sentiments.

As with all such movements, the leadership demands loyalty not only from its followers but from all within the boundaries of its control. Alisa Solomon described the domestic climate of the 'war on terror'30 in the United States:

Like any avalanche, this one started at the top, and likely dates back to the moment after 9/11 when President Bush warned the world's nations, 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists'. From Bush on down, in the months that followed, government officials drew limits around acceptable speech.

White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer told Americans to 'watch what they say'. Such words gained force when the Patriot Act gave the government extensive new powers to spy, interrogate and detain. When civil libertarians began to protest the curbing of constitutional rights, Attorney General John Ashcroft offered a forbidding rejoinder:

To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists.

These kinds of remarks from our government's top leaders, says Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, have granted ordinary people license 'to shut down alternative views'. The Administration has fashioned a domestic arm of its new doctrine of pre-emption.
(œSolomon 2003 - accessed 27 July 2010)

An editorial in The Economist (2003) described the mindset of the neo-conservatives who wielded considerable clout in the second George Bush presidency,

They see the world in terms of good and evil. They think America should be willing to use military power to defeat the forces of chaos.

Martin Sieff, in a United Press International (2003) commentary on the aftermath of the Iraq invasion of 2003, explained the ambition of those who championed the 'war on terror',

[S]o confident were Office of the Secretary of Defense planners and their neo-conservative allies of the coming oil bonanza from Iraq that they openly advocated using it, as Judis wrote in The New Republic 'to remake the Middle East in our democratic, capitalist image...'
(Sieff, United Press International 2003)

John Judis explained their ambitions clearly:

...the neoconservatives inside and outside the administration take a radical, even revolutionary, view of what is possible and desirable in the region; they see turmoil as inevitable and desirable. Says one senior administration official, "Upheaval is on its way. We might as well get in front of it." They see Saddam's ouster not just as a means of preventing a future nuclear threat but of remaking the entire region along democratic, free-market lines....

The neoconservatives don't worry about offending potential critics in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Syria because they think of them as enemies who should eventually be swept aside by the installation of a democratic, free-market Iraq on their borders. They reject U.N. or multilateral participation in a post- Saddam transition.

Says one senior official,

This is the moment where our ideas will be vindicated, or we can walk away. You can't count on the international community to establish a new democratic or political order.

The way it would work is that the reigning power would distribute power and businesses, and which people it chooses to deal with are automatically made into kings. Do we want to be the kingmaker, or do we want to default that over to the U.N.? I am not sure we want to cede it.

I would bet the U.N. would seek the acquiescence of Iraq's neighbors-all of which have vested interests. There are three that would be problematic: Riyadh, Tehran, and Damascus. And the U.N. would work through them.

(John B. Judis, œOver a Barrel, The New Republic, January 20, 2003)

(25/04/17)

Fifteen years later, the problems posed by neoconservative hijacking of US instruments of power remain potent. As Judis explained, 'neoconservatives inside and outside the administration take a radical, even revolutionary, view of what is possible and desirable' around the world. And, with weak, seemingly rudderless leadership in Washington, they have, once again, moved to assert their influence and ambitions on those who seem incapable of formulating coherent plans of their own 31. The Project for a New American Century has been superseded by the œForeign Policy Initiative, but, as its website has explained, its stated aims remain unaltered.

William Rivers Pitt has bleakly summed it up:

...The ragged remnants of the neo-conservative cabal that came together under George W. Bush is still out there, plotting and scheming, concocting novel new ways to light the world on fire for power and profit.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), think-tank mothership for every bad neocon idea that led us into Iraq and a wider conflict in the Middle East, never died; it just got new offices down the block. Unlike their counterparts in the current administration, the neocons know how the gears of government work, where the levers are, and how to actually get things done.

Combine the wild fervor of Trump's band of wreckers with the ice-eyed competence of the neocon assassins, and the result could be horrific beyond any known measure.
(William Rivers Pitt, œThe Looming Neocon Invasion of Trumpland, Truthout, Op-Ed, April 22, 2017)

Neo-conservative leaders of the United States of America, and their allies in other Western countries, know that capitalism and democracy are not ideological models, but the way the objective world is (or must be) organized. They have a duty to ensure that wherever dark, dangerous and irrational forces are at work, attacking democracy and capitalism, those forces are challenged, their supporters eliminated 32.

(18/01/16)

As Western communities feel themselves threatened by the growing influence of what the United States' President George W Bush called 'the axis of evil' they know that, at all costs, the evils of anti-capitalism and anti-democracy must be challenged and beaten back33.

Henry Hyde, Chairman of the US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations spelt it out, on October 3 2001, weeks after the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York:

Let us begin by accepting there is no single enemy to be defeated, no one network to be eliminated. Al-Qa'eda is but our most prominent opponent, but its outlook is shared by many others who are equally committed to our destruction.

If we believe that our safety can be secured by destroying any one organization or any single person, we will only ensure that we will remain unsafe and unprepared once again. For we know now that we have permanent, mortal enemies who will seize upon our vulnerabilities to bloody us, to murder our citizens, to commit horror for the purpose of forcing horror upon us....

Our strategy, plans, and actions must be comprehensive, deliberate and formulated for the long-term. We must be prepared not only to protect ourselves from new assaults, not only to intercept and frustrate them, but to eliminate new threats at their source. This must be a permanent campaign, similar to the ancient one humanity has waged against disease and its never-ending assault upon our defenses.
(œHyde, October 3 2001 - accessed 27 July 2010)

(29/02/16)

In such times, human beings feel the need to reassert and reinforce those principles that they instinctively know to be central to a properly ordered and secure world. Equally, they know, beyond any doubt, that unless they resolutely and uncompromisingly confront the enemy, intent on destroying it, it will destroy them.

As Henry Hyde (2001) claimed, one of the major terrorist threats against Western nations at the start of the 21st century has been perceived as coming from Al-Qa'eda 34. For Hyde and most other Western leaders the organization is a network of terror and evil, master-minded by a Saudi Arabian, Sheikh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin.

Bin-Ladin spelt out his reasons for seeing the activities of the United States (and Western countries in general) as a plague, destructively consuming the resources of his country, undermining the most important central understandings of life, and threatening the unity, security and well-being of his people and his world:

The Arabian Peninsula has never - since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas - been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies now spreading in it like locusts, consuming its riches and destroying its plantations. All this is happening at a time when nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food.
(Bin-Ladin, œText of Fatwa Urging Jihad Against Americans, 1998 - accessed 20/03/2016)

Just as Henry Hyde insisted that the enemies of democracy and capitalism must be eliminated, so Bin-Ladin insists that those who threaten the existence of his world must be eliminated.

The more threatened people feel, the more strongly they recommit themselves to those fundamental primary ideological principles, which they know will reassert order and security within their communities and lives.

In the West, people during the threatening years of the 1970s and 1980s recommitted themselves to fundamental economic doctrines. In the early years of the 21st century, under the fundamentalist leadership of the second George Bush and his coterie of 'born again' believers in the efficacy of 'Western democratic principles', Western communities remained committed to globalization, privatization, economic growth; reducing public expenditure; re-imposing democracy (the political frame of Western capitalism) wherever it has been weakened or displaced and to eliminating those who most vociferously oppose their activities.

Because Western people organize their lives through economically focused social templates, the forms they re-emphasize in times of stress and threat focus on economic issues and are aimed at rectifying economic processes and bolstering economic performance on the presumption that this will alleviate the perceived problems.

In the last decades of the 20th century Western countries and communities recommitted themselves to the fundamental principles underpinning free-market capitalism. Since that time they have also recommitted themselves to ensuring that the fundamental principles of capitalism and its political frame - democracy - are enforced and reinforced wherever 'anti-Western' sentiments seem to be mounting and capitalism seems to be losing its influence.

In 2016, a newcomer has joined the pantheon of evil-doers against which the West must wage relentless war. Al-Qa'eda, still active in the continuing destabilization of both Iraq and Syria, has become an 'almost moderate' insurgency, paling into the background as ISIS, the 'Islamic State of Iraq and Syria', has become the new face of international terrorism.

Now, the West, and The United States of America, as champion of 'Western values', is preoccupied with 'home grown' terrorists, inspired by or belonging to the new 'Islamic State'. The 'war on terror' has become domesticated within Western territories.

As Henry Giroux has explained,

The United States is now addicted to violence because the "war on terror" relies on an extreme fear and hatred of those considered enemies. As a result, it feeds the machinery of permanent warfare by constantly inventing a demonized Other. I think basically that terror is now such a central part of the political nervous system in the United States that it's become the major organizing principle of society.

The discourse of war, violence and fear now largely mold our conception of ourselves, our relations to others and the larger world. The defining vocabularies of American life undercut the possibility of challenging the assumption that violence is the most important tool for addressing social problems.

In this instance, the "war on terrorism" has created a war culture that works through various cultural apparatuses from the schools to the mainstream media to produce what amounts to a society steeped in violence. The United States is a country saturated in the discourse of war and violence, and this is partly evident in the widespread use of metaphors of war, extending from the wars on drugs and crime, to the "war on terror" and the so-called war on Christmas.
(Leslie Thatcher, interview with Henry A. Giroux, œHenry Giroux on State Terrorism and the Ideological Weapons of Neoliberalism, Truthout, 28 February 2016)

The first Western leader in the second half of the 20th century to steer her country determinedly toward a Western fundamentalist future as a means of arresting and reversing the moral decline of the nation was the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

As a prime minister representing the newly energetic right wing of the Conservative Party (the 'Dries', as they later called themselves, as opposed to the old-style moderate Tories, or 'Wets'), Thatcher advocated greater independence of the individual from the state; an end to allegedly excessive government interference in the economy, including privatization of state-owned enterprises and the sale of public housing to tenants; reductions in expenditures on social services such as health care, education, and housing; limitations on the printing of money in accord with the economic doctrine of monetarism; and legal restrictions on trade unions.

The term Thatcherism came to refer not just to these policies but also to certain aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, fierce nationalism, a zealous regard for the interests of the individual, and a combative, uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.
(œEncyclopedia Britannica [accessed 27 May, 2018])

The following readings provide an insight into the kinds of social reorganization that Western people felt they had to undertake in order to ensure that life was secure and that the world remained 'sane' in the latter part of the 20th century.

Milton Friedman (with Rose Friedman) (1980), the theoretical mind behind a great many of Margaret Thatcher's policies in the early years of her British government (1979 - 1990), provided an explanation of the essential requirements for:

... building a society that relies primarily on voluntary cooperation to organize both economic and other activity, a society that preserves and expands human freedom, that keeps government in its place, keeping it our servant and not letting it become our master.
(œFriedman & Friedman 1980)

œStelzer (1992) described the 'decline' of Britain between 1945 and 1979 and gives a very positive summing up of the achievements of the Thatcher Government in reversing that decline. As Irwin Stelzer says:

It was individual responsibility, rather than reliance on government, that now became the accepted standard against which to measure policy initiatives.... Thatcher restored to the UK a sense that appropriate policies and driving entrepreneurialism can produce steady increases in material well-being.
(Stelzer 1992)

œStuart Hall's (1988) analysis of Thatcherism provided a Marxist perspective on the precursors and consequences of Margaret Thatcher's privatization policies.

As we suggested earlier, within any community of people who share a common primary ideology, there will be a range of secondary ideological models. Friedman and Stelzer provide explanation of how the world should be organized and people interact with each other from the perspective of one set of Western secondary ideological models. Hall presents an alternative, dissident way of organizing the world.

Both perspectives share a common set of primary ideological understandings. Underlying both neo-conservative (right) and Marxist (left) emphases and perspectives is a level of common understanding:

Conclusion Return to Chapter Index

Commentators on life in non-Western communities and countries always have been, and always will be faced with the problem of disentangling themselves from their own primary and secondary ideological commitments in order better to understand the primary and secondary ideological presumptions and commitments of the people amongst whom they are undertaking research.

This has never been more important than it is in the early 21st century. Despite (or, more likely, because of) the driving commitment of Western communities to globalization and democratization in countries and communities around the world, increasing numbers of people in non-Western communities are seeing people of the West not as harbingers of good, but as exploitative, immoral, and intent on destroying the most important fundamental understandings of life in their communities.

People in the West are certain that their understandings and forms of organization and interaction are derived from the nature of objective reality and provide the most efficient, equitable means of ensuring individual (and therefore communal) development and well-being. Forces that oppose Western forms and understandings are therefore irrational and dangerous to the well-being of human beings everywhere.

So, they are determined, wherever they find 'fundamentalism' and its associated 'terrorist' activity to oppose them and finally displace these evils by those forms of organization and interaction to which they are committed. That Western determination to impose their own fundamentalist agenda on the rest of the world, if the reasoning contained within this chapter is valid, ensures the perpetuation and deepening of the forces they oppose.

Like it or not, Western people live in a world of diverse primary and secondary ideologies (which only make sense in terms of the primary ideologies from which they are derived). Every attempt to impose Western secondary ideological models on people who do not share Western primary ideological understandings guarantees the disruption of their communities and ultimately the emergence of revitalization movements aimed at reasserting and reinforcing their own understandings of life.

End of Chapter

Chapter 3:
An Explanation and History of the Emergence of Capitalism Return to Index of Chapters

In a way which is common to people in all societies, people in Western communities, when considering the fundamental rights and responsibilities of community members towards one another, speak in ideological terms.35

While each Western secondary ideological frame spells out a particular version of 'reality', they all presume certain fundamental understandings about the nature of individuals, communities, the environment, and the metaphysical realm, and about the forms of relationship found in and between them.36

It is from these less than consciously held basic presumptions that individuals and communities construct their own particular variants of 'ideal realities' (or secondary ideologies) 37 .

To communities which do not share Western primary ideological presumptions, the confrontations among competing Western secondary ideologies will appear less than rational. Because their own forms of secondary ideology are based on their own primary ideological presumptions about life, which are likely to be very different from the basic presumptions contained within Western primary ideology, it is very difficult for them to enter into a dialogue with Western people.

Rather, as has happened during the last half century, people become opposed on the basis of subconsciously held basic presumptions about life, rather than on the basis of variant secondary ideologies. So, we speak of the confrontation between 'Islam and the West', rather than about a confrontation between Shiites and capitalists. What we have is a confrontation between primary rather than secondary ideologies.

Through this century, as non-Western communities become increasingly self-assertive, we are likely to find that confrontations will occur between communities holding variant primary ideologies - variant sets of basic presumptions about the meaning, purpose and organization of life 38. These presumptions, being reflections of the basic cognitive frames of communities, will be poorly expressed. Those who attempt dialogue based upon such confrontations will find the explanations and basic positions of their adversaries rationally and logically unconvincing.

Before we can grapple with the confrontations which are already occurring and will repeatedly re-occur throughout this century, we need to comprehend the basic presumptions underpinning Western capitalist understandings of life. In this discussion we will attempt to do this through exploring the historical experiences which shaped and molded Western European communities over the past thousand years as they moved from feudalism to capitalism.

How have some of the most basic presumptions which underpin Western understandings of life been shaped by history, becoming seen as features of the real world, the unfocused backdrop to secondary ideological disputes? 39

Here I will examine:

In the examination of these issues I am going to look at some of the historical experiences of Western Europeans which have, over more than eight hundred years, produced the consumer culture of today. To understand the present we have to know the experiences of the past which shaped and molded Western European thinking and action and produced the primary ideological presumptions which underpin interaction, meaning and organization in Western communities.

People and recognized 'environments' Return to Chapter Index

Fundamental to understanding Western primary ideological presumptions is an understanding of the ways in which people conceive of and interact with their environments. In order to grapple with the ways in which Western Europeans conceive of themselves in relation to their environments, we need to understand several important fundamental assumptions 42 from which they operate.

The set of laws ordering each environment is self-contained. The rules for interaction with, and in, each environment can be spelt out, providing people with all the necessary information for interacting in the best possible ways with each of those environments.

This belief has led Western people to assume that the sets of laws can be 'discovered', understood and mastered through research and education. Through mastering the principles and rule requirements for interaction with each environment, the best possible forms of behavior, attitude, organization and interaction for individuals and groups can be determined. Once those best possibilities have been outlined and people commit themselves to living in accord with those possibilities, both individuals and communities become 'developed'.

Once Western researchers have determined the fundamental laws for interaction with each recognized environment, they are able to prescribe the best forms of activity and organization for any community. They are therefore able to evaluate the performance of any community in terms of their prescriptions.

The sets of prescriptions reflect, of course, the secondary ideologies of Western communities. The presumption of the existence of a range of separate environments with which people interact is, however, a primary ideological presumption, one which is basic to the ways in which Western people think and organize their lives, no matter what secondary ideology they might subscribe to.

So, the keys to development 43 are:

Rathbone Gregg, in the 1870s, put the need for education very clearly:

The lot of man ... is in his own hands, from his being surrounded by fixed laws, on knowledge of which, and conformity to which, his wellbeing depends. The study of these and obedience to them form, therefore, the great aim of public instruction. Men must be taught:

(quoted in œHolyoake 1896, p. 85)

Western people find it natural 45 that all activity should be circumscribed by rules and regulations. Rarely, if ever, has there been such an acceptance of and compliance with systems of rules and regulations as exists in Western communities 46. But, because those rules are applied by impersonal bureaucracies, they are not seen as intrusive.

Western people regard rules and regulations as necessary for the protection of their individuality and a guarantee of their right to interact with their environments for their private ends 47. Since the 12th century, Western Europeans have increasingly committed themselves to uncovering systems of law governing the various environments, and to educating people to live in accordance with them once they have been uncovered.

Among the reasons for the phenomenal success of Western Europeans in imposing their world views on others throughout the 19th and 20th centuries is their absolute certainty of the superiority of their 'knowledge' of how the physical, social and spiritual worlds 'really work', and their ability to impose on others well-organized systems of law and government, centered not on individual personalities but on impersonal bureaucracies.

Western people have come to believe that, whereas all other people live in the mists of superstition and dubious rationality, governed by the whim of their rulers, they have discovered the 'laws' of the physical, social and spiritual worlds. So, they can act 'rationally', ensuring that all their behavior, interaction and organization conform to those principles which underpin the rule-bound systems they are in the process of uncovering.

When Europeans imposed themselves upon the rest of the world during the 19th and 20th centuries they took with them the 'best' ways of using the physical environment, of organizing communities, and of ensuring individual 'development' and a successful life in the next world. They therefore set about changing the worlds they encountered in terms of their understandings.

The physical environment could (and should) be dominated, managed and organized to 'realize its potential', that is ensure high yields, whether of minerals, crops or anything else which Western people might consider a 'potential' for that environment (e.g. 'tourism').

The social environment could (and should) be managed and organized to 'realize its potential', to ensure individual development (defined, of course, in terms of the particular secondary ideology of those holding the power).

And the spiritual environment could (and should) be managed and reorganized to ensure high rates of conversion and commitment to the religious forms and beliefs of Europe (which would not only ensure life in the next world, but also orient people to be responsible citizens in this 48).

Not only were Western Europeans committed to systems of laws, rules and regulations, they also strongly emphasized the use of mathematics to measure success by quantifying results. This emphasis on quantification coincided with yet another emphasis, that on material possessions, on the accumulation of goods and the generation of material wealth.

Industry and frugality would inevitably produce riches. The demonstration of these virtues, in turn, would inevitably bring respect and status. So, in order to attain and maintain status and respect, one needed to demonstrate that one had gained wealth by one's own efforts - that one had realized one's own potential and the potential of the environments within which one lived.

One's material worth is most easily ascertained by giving cash values to possessions so that a total value can readily be calculated by interested others. This led 'naturally' to conspicuous consumption and ownership, demonstrating the wealth of the person. And so there emerged, in Western Europe, apparently paradoxical emphases on hard work and frugality on the one hand, and increasing conspicuous ownership and consumption on the other.

Of course, Western Europeans are convinced that these emphases are 'logical', and necessary for the 'rational' direction and control of the environments within which they live.

Whereas almost all other people are bound by 'tradition', by forms of organization, interaction and behavior which have their roots in the historical experiences of their forebears, Western people believe that they organize life in terms of rational constructs, derived not from tradition but from scientific investigation of their environments. As they uncover the principles governing their natural and social environments, they gain control of them and are able to manage them to produce the best possible returns for people.

We need to confront this belief.

Do the constructs and understandings of Western Europeans come from their scientific investigation of substantive environments, or is the nature and form of those 'environments' the result of reification of aspects of the natural and social worlds, required by the historical experiences of Western people?

Are the environments with which Western people interact objective features of the world which are recognized as such by all people everywhere, or are they only real to Western Europeans?

In the following historical sketches I suggest that the environments which are recognized are consequences of the historical tensions and confrontations of Western Europe. They are, in fact, understandings which are derived from, and required by, Western historical experience. They are as shaped and determined by 'tradition' as any other system of knowledge and understanding in other communities. The presumption that there are sets of laws waiting to be uncovered for the control of each environment is, equally, a consequence of particular historical experience.

The Western European conviction that they have 'got it right', while others have not, is based in their certainty of the validity of their view of the world, and the effectiveness with which it allows them to manipulate their environments in engaging in forms of activity and organization which are required by Western industrial social templates.

Western communities, no less than any other communities, have inherited their understanding of how their world is organized and the ways in which they relate to the environments in which they live.

A key and fundamental difference between Western communities and most other communities lies in the Western presumption of the existence of separate environments, each of which operates in terms of its own logic and its own set of operational principles or laws. Before any such sets of laws can even be anticipated, one must recognize the existence of the separate environments to which they relate.

For people not brought up in Western communities, and therefore not thinking in terms of Western presumptions, the existence of the identified environments, let alone the rules for interaction with them, is unlikely to be recognized.

In the same way that Western people take the existence of separate environments as a subconscious given, something which needs no justification, other people take their own understanding of the environment within which they live for granted, together with their understanding of their interaction with it.

When they are required to organize life in terms of Western European understandings, they inevitably warp the organized environments within which they are required to operate towards their own, quite different presumptions about their environment. This effect is most clearly seen in what, for Western people, is the dominant social environment, the economy.

Before I begin an examination of the historical emergence of this Western view of environments governed by systems of law, a few qualifiers are necessary. When investigating historical trends one has to start somewhere. The important primary understandings of any community do not suddenly appear. They are shaped over hundreds of years and through a multitude of interacting variables and circumstances. So, one has somewhat arbitrarily to decide on a starting point in time and on the variables which one will investigate. What is described in one century will have its roots in preceding centuries.

The influences on community understanding which I highlight are, themselves, modified and focused through a wide range of other variables and circumstances on which I have chosen not to dwell. However, for our purposes here, those issues I investigate do seem to be central to understanding how Western Europeans came to conceive of life as being lived in a number of distinct environments, governed by systems of law, and subject to quantification and evaluation in terms of material returns for individual endeavor.

The 'economic' environment Return to Chapter Index

Elsewhere I have suggested that many people in non-Western communities make no clear distinction between their 'economic' and their 'social' (or any other) environments 49. So, when they engage in 'economic' activity, they, quite naturally, without needing to think about it, integrate their activity with social responsibilities and concerns. This integration produces a very different form of activity from that presumed to be 'economic' by Western people.

Because of this 'confusion' (in Western terms) of environments, the presumptions in terms of which they organize activity are also very different (and they are highly unlikely to have developed detailed sets of economic rules and regulations defining and governing activity and impartially applied across communities 50).

Their economic activity does not match that anticipated and required by Western people. They seem to be indulging in 'informal', or even 'illegal', economic activity, that is, activity which falls outside the scope of 'legitimate' economic activity for Western people.

Even when they have attended the West's best teaching institutions, through which the 'necessary' forms of legislation, organization and activity are inculcated, all too often, once back in their home countries, they seem to 'warp' and 'distort' the forms they have learned.

In order to sketch the emergence of primary ideological presumptions underpinning economic organization and activity in Western communities I am going to have to examine the ways in which those presumptions became established in late medieval Europe. As will become clear, the understandings and organizational forms of the period were very different from those of Western communities in the 20th century.

Unfortunately, given the constraints of this discussion, the sketches must necessarily be brief and therefore inadequate. The focus will also have to be limited, bypassing the emergence of particular metaphysical understandings, and the emergence and establishment of the various 'disciplines' for uncovering systems of law operating within the recognized environments.

The development of systems of law Return to Chapter Index

(07/03/17)

In the feudal period of the 10th to the 12th centuries, western Europeans saw the world as divided into two domains: a spiritual domain and a secular one, which included political, economic, social and material environments as now understood in Western communities. These were hierarchically interrelated, with the spiritual domain dominant and the secular domain subject to spiritual oversight and direction.

The spiritual domain was dominated by the Roman Church, with the pope at its head and bishops as representatives of the pope within territorial districts. In their own districts, in all normal matters, bishops took final responsibility, only referring to Rome when something out of the ordinary needed definition, or when they needed support in the face of challenges to their authority.

The Feudal 'Secular Domain' Return to Chapter Index

The secular domain was the arena within which the Church exercised authority. In the secular domain, feudal princes held political power within hierarchically organized territories. As Maitland has described, feudalism was:

... a state of society in which the main bond is the relation between lord and man, a relation implying on the lord's part protection and defence; on the man's part protection, service and reverence ...

The national organization is a system of these relationships: at the head there stands the king as lord of all, below him are his immediate vassals, or tenants in chief, who again are lords of tenants, who again may be lords of tenants, and so on, down to the lowest possessor of land.

Lastly, as every other court consists of the lord's tenants, so the king's court consists of his tenants in chief, and so far as there is any constitutional control over the king it is exercised by the body of these tenants.
(quoted in Macfarlane 1987, pp. 182-3)

Although Western capitalism depends on a division of the world into private and public arenas, feudal Europe did not require such a division. As Macfarlane, quoting Maitland, says:

The English lawyer Bracton [in the mid-13th century] knew of the distinction of 'private' and 'public', yet 'he makes little use of it. This was because

feudalism ... is a denial of this distinction. Just in so far as the ideal of feudalism is perfectly realized, all that we call public law is merged in private law: jurisdiction is property, office is property, the kingship itself is property; the same word dominium has to stand now for ownership and now for lordship.

(Macfarlane 1987, p. 182)

While the distinction between public and private made little sense in the feudal world, it was during the feudal period that the Western European emphasis on the importance of publicly formulated law, governing private interactions, developed. As Tay and Kamenka explain:

The feudal compact, in keeping with Germanic tradition, was not an act of authority but a voluntary agreement between independent legal persons - one agreeing to serve, the other to provide and protect. It was an enforceable contract which bound the king or lord as much as it bound the subject or leigeman.

In a very important sense, it brought the whole basis of political authority and obedience into the area of private law, of relations between individuals capable, for the purposes of law, of abstract equality and of rationally and freely seeking their individual well-being and subordinating themselves voluntarily. Those not capable of such freedom, e.g. serfs, were not fully legal persons.
(Tay & Kamenka 1983, p. 69)

Although feudal relationships did not require a distinction between public and private realms, the concept of 'free' legally defined individuals entering into contracts with one another was born in the feudal period. It became greatly expanded and provided a basis for understanding the nature of the relationship between the individual and society during the 17th century, but it underpinned the development of feudal law.

It also provided one of the rationales for the emergence of a wide range of common-interest groupings during the medieval period. During this period numerous 'associations', 'unions', 'guilds', 'fraternities', 'communities', 'colleges', 'leagues', 'nations' 51 and other forms of common-interest grouping developed, managed by those who constituted the group and designed for mutual protection and self-help 52. Interaction among individuals within these groups was fraternal, with most exchanges being based on cooperation rather than competition.

This form of egalitarian, common-interest grouping is usual in hierarchically organized communities. It allows those who see themselves as being in a similar relationship within a hierarchy to join with others of like mind in promoting and protecting their interests.

As feudal organization became increasingly distorted during the medieval centuries 53, these groups became increasingly important. Amongst the most important were those which brought educated people together to protect their interests against others, and those which emerged amongst the 'money-making' people of western Europe.

Together, these two groups were to challenge and finally displace feudal leaders, and, with their displacement, introduce an entirely different rationale for the organization of society, new forms of interpersonal relationship, and new understandings of the meaning and purpose of life. And, for a variety of reasons, some of which will be sketched here, these forms of reorganization required a very different set of primary ideological presumptions.

Western Europe, over a period of eight hundred years, with enormous difficulty, learned to think in ways which were foreign to people who lived in the feudal communities of the 10th to 13th centuries.

While the sense of legitimate, approved feudal hierarchy within the society was strong, the dominance of hierarchically determined social position over membership of such groupings ensured the subordination of group interests to those of the wider society. Whenever, for whatever reason, the cohesion of the wider society was suspect, these common-interest groupings became more demanding, leading to strikes, riots and other forms of social challenge.

So, in the period when we begin our story, people lived in hierarchically organized communities, with their primary social and political status defined by their relationship to land. Those of similar status within the society recognized egalitarian bonds of common interest, and tended to support one another and make demands of each other on the basis of their shared identity. But, equally, they recognized those who were hierarchically superior as leaders who both required and deserved their allegiance. In fact, they recognized common-interest association only in terms of these hierarchical responsibilities.

At the base of the hierarchical pyramid of feudal communities were the peasants who, though they held some land, usually held too little to ensure their livelihood. Few peasants could have lived off the land they held within an estate alone. As Ganshof has described for the later medieval period:

... However great its contribution to livelihood, agriculture had by no means altogether displaced the very ancient practices of pastoral life, hunting, and food collecting. By his fields alone the peasant literally could not have lived. All about the area more or less permanently cultivated and, when under crops, held in strict individual or family possession, he required access to immense stretches of common waste left in its natural condition.

These moors and marshes and forests did not merely furnish necessary food for his cattle. His own nourishment depended on them; for wild vegetables and fruits were even more important in his dietary than wild game ...

In villages where there was no lord, or where the lord's power was a late growth, the village community sometimes retained absolute control of these common lands; it owned them, in feudal phrase, en alleux... But throughout the greater part of Europe, where common was essential but still only a sort of annexe to the arable, the lord almost always extended his power over commons as well as over fields ...

[However] it is no doubt vain to look for the true medieval 'owner' of the commons.
(Ganshof 1971, pp. 281, 282)54

Land was held by families who owed allegiance to those above them who provided not only access to land but also political and other forms of protection and a sense of community to those under their jurisdiction. And a great deal of the land in an area was 'common'; that is, it had no legal owner.

European feudal organization was not based on the need to ascribe individual ownership to all existing land. In this feature, it has a lot in common with many non-Western communities before the imposition of Western forms of organization in the 19th and 20th centuries. When land is not primarily seen as a wealth-creating resource, and people are not primarily geared to the 'wealth-creating' use of their environment, there is no strong compulsion to claim ownership of 'un-owned' land.

The West, as a result of experiences to be sketched here, came strongly to believe in the necessity for all land to be legally and exclusively held by identifiable 'real' or 'artificial' individuals, and used to generate increasing cash income for its owners.55

The Feudal 'Spiritual Domain' Return to Chapter Index

The communities in which medieval people lived were serviced by clergy who belonged to a hierarchically organized Church and claimed very important rights and responsibilities within the communities they serviced.

The metaphor which emerged to describe the relation between pope and emperor, between clergy and laity, was that of the soul and the body. The body without the soul is of no consequence. It is the soul which animates the body. Equally, the Church ensured the spiritual life of the secular world. The Church was, therefore, central to life in the medieval world. It therefore claimed authority over the secular world and reinforced its claims with legal statutes based upon written, historical evidence accumulated over the centuries 56.

This assumption of the superiority of the soul over the body, of that which is life over that which is a 'container' for that life, was to become significant in the emerging belief in the independence of self-contained, pre-social individuals from the 17th century onwards.

Then, with the material and the spiritual thoroughly separated, a similar separation was to be assumed between human beings and the material environments they controlled. Individuals were to be perceived as separate from and superior to the material world, over which they rightfully exercised dominion. Just as the Church believed it had a mandate from God to direct the medieval world, so Western individuals came to believe that they had a mandate to 'realize the potential' of the resources of the material world wherever they might be found.

The Church's power came from two sources. It held large tracts of land controlled by bishops and abbots who, as feudal lords, had authority in the secular domain, and it was also perceived to hold a very real power to condemn people to hell.

If one could, as the Roman Church after Augustine (354 - 430 AD) claimed (cf. Warfield 1970, p. 122ff), be saved only by belonging to the Church, then to be excommunicated was to be consigned to eternal damnation. In an age when people were convinced of the existence and potency of a spiritual realm, one placed the destiny of one's soul at risk by challenging the Church.

However, there were long periods, particularly following the disintegration of the ninth-century Carolingian empire, when the papacy was politically weak, dominated by local Roman families, and unable to assert its claimed authority.

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During the 10th and 11th centuries increasing numbers of the secular rulers of western Europe extended their authority over bishops within their territories. This situation came to a head with the accession of the Duke of Saxony, Otto the Great (912-973), to the German throne in 936. Otto, ostensibly to rescue Pope John XII, conquered Italy and received an imperial coronation from the pope.

As part of his strategy for securing his reign, Otto had made an alliance with the German Church. Bishops and archbishops were given lands and immunity from some of the royal claims on landlords in return for full support of Otto's reign. With the papacy very weak, another way of ensuring support from the ecclesiastical hierarchy was to appoint it (cf. Hayes, Baldwin & Cole 1962, p. 142ff).

The Investiture Conflict Return to Chapter Index

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The situation was similar throughout northern and western Europe during the 10thand 11th centuries. It was brought to a head by Pope Gregory VII in 1075 when he prohibited any form of lay investiture of the clergy. Gregory, calling on legal precedent as established within the Church canons (laws), denied the right of secular leaders to appoint ecclesiastical office holders. He argued that, on the contrary, the pope had the right both to anoint and to depose secular leaders.

Henry IV (1050-1106), King of Germany from 1056 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1084, opposed the decree and called on the pope,

...now not pope, but false monk, [to]... relinquish the Apostolic See which you have arrogated.
(Koenigsberger 1987, p. 166)

The pope responded by excommunicating him, and, faced with resultant challenges to his authority, Henry was forced personally to petition the pope for absolution and reinstatement to his position as emperor.

An entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1902) described it:

...There [at the castle of Canossa, where Gregory was residing] occurred the famous scene in which Henry, the highest of secular potentates, stood for three days in the courtyard of the castle, clad in the shirt of a penitent, and entreating to be admitted to the pope's presence. No historical incident has more profoundly impressed the imagination of the Western world. It marked the highest point reached by papal authority, and presents a vivid picture of the awe inspired during the Middle Ages by the supernatural powers supposed to be wielded by the church.
(Encyclopaedia Britannica (1902), 10th ed, vol. XXVIII, Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (1050-1106))

The pope had demonstrated that he held very real political power within western European territories. Secular leaders, very aware of the way in which Henry had been humiliated, felt a need to counter this power in some way. This confrontation marked the start of growing conflict between the papacy and secular rulers throughout western Europe, a confrontation which has come to be known as the Investiture Conflict, which finally climaxed in the 16th century Reformation.

The Roman Church argued that, since kings were established in their kingdoms through the Church's administration of the ritual of Unction 57, religious authority was superior to secular authority. As Ullman (1965, p. 86) says, 'It was that act alone which made the king'. The stage was set in the 10th and 11th centuries for mounting conflict between secular and religious leaders. The political history of this period is that of fluctuating but constantly increasing papal fortunes and claims to ascendancy and authority over secular rulers.

The Roman Church underwrote its political dominance through appeals to canon law, established over the centuries, and taking its form from Roman law, defined by the legal works of Justinian, compiled in the sixth century. Such appeals depended on the maintenance of a strong legal framework and of people schooled in interpreting both the canons and the legal prescriptions of Roman law as defined by Justinian.

From the 11th century onwards, as Murray points out,

popes, legates and councils saw the evils of their age as "contempt for the canons". They sought to revive the Church's ancient legal framework, with a few surreptitious accretions
(Murray 1978, p. 214).

This revival of the Church's legal framework, coupled with its use as a justification for political claims, led to legal expertise, and the development of legal frameworks, being widely perceived as of great practical importance within both secular and religious spheres. For the Church,58

Mankind is ruled by two laws: Natural Law and Custom. Natural Law is that which is contained in the Scriptures and the Gospel.
(d'Entreves 1965, p. 33)

Natural law was canonical law; all other law was of suspect quality and should be altered to conform to the canons of the Church. Secular leaders, ruling by custom, should, themselves, be subject to the natural law of the Church. All legal statutes of states and nations should conform to canonical law.

The clash between Henry II, King of England, and Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (1163 - 1170 AD), resulting in Thomas's death, was a product of this conflict:

... when the king had drawn up sixteen "Constitutions", which he said embodied the "Customs of the Realm", the archbishop denounced them as contrary to canon law, and refused to seal them.
(Ward 1905, p. 47)

With the Church's legal framework revived and a new stress placed on legal training within the Church, increasing numbers of legally trained scholars passed out of the schools and universities of medieval Europe.

One paradoxical result of the canonical revival and the burst of education which followed it, was that kings could now lay their hands on learned officials.
(Murray 1978, p. 217)

What followed, with many slips for kings who were initially forced to rely on scholars who had been dedicated to and trained for the Church, was a burgeoning emphasis on the study of Roman law throughout the late 12th century.

The Need for Written, Centralized, Secular Systems of Law Return to Chapter Index

The Investiture Conflict underscored a need for secular rulers to have alternative legal frameworks to those employed by the Church. One way to do this was to develop alternative interpretations of Roman law, based on scholarship, countering the interpretations of the Church.

However, if they were to break the shackles of the Church by challenging canonical law, they had, first, to give the concept of 'natural law' a new meaning. It had to be something other than simply 'the laws of the Church'. The study of law had begun in earnest.

William Blackstone would explain this new justification for secular law-making in the 18th century:

... [A]s man depends absolutely upon his maker for every thing, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his maker's will. This will of his maker is called the law of nature.
(Blackstone, 1765, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Introduction, Section 2 pp. 39-40)

During the following three centuries secular bureaucracies were developed which were firmly anchored in written legal decrees and statutes. If anything was not legally defined, it was suspect. The basis for legitimacy was to be found in written statutes.

The Investiture Conflict convinced the people of western Europe of the need for the independent development of centralized, secular legal systems, maintained, refined and applied by state bureaucrats and bureaucracies, with all documentation stored within state archives, to protect and assert the interests of rulers. They needed to be able to beat The Church at its own game.

F. W. Maitland, in a 1902 contribution to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, explained it well:

In English jurisprudence 'legal memory' is said to extend as far as, but no further than the coronation of Richard I (3 September 1189). This is a technical doctrine concerning prescriptive rights, but is capable of expressing an important truth.

For the last seven centuries, little more or less, the English law, which is now overshadowing a large share of the earth, has had not only an extremely continuous, but a matchlessly well-attested history, and, moreover, has been the subject matter of rational exposition.

Already in 1194 the daily doings of a tribunal which was controlling and moulding the whole system were being punctually recorded in letters yet legible, and from that time onwards it is rather the enormous bulk than any dearth of available materials that prevents us from tracing the transformation of every old doctrine and the emergence and expansion of every new idea.

If we are content to look no further than the text-books - the books written by lawyers for lawyers - we may read our way backwards to Blackstone (d. 1780), Hale (d. 1676), Coke (d. 1634), Fitzherbert (d. 1538), Littleton (d. 1481), Bracton (d. 1268), Glanvill (d. 1190), until we are in the reign of Henry of Anjou [Henry II], and yet shall perceive that we are always reading of one and the same body of law, though the little body has become great, and the ideas that were few and indefinite have become many and explicit.

Beyond these seven lucid centuries lies a darker period. Nearly six centuries will still divide us from the dooms of AEthelberht (c. 600), and nearly seven from the Lex Salica (c. 500)...
(Encyclopaedia Britannica, 10th ed., supplement (1902), vol. XXVIII, pp. 246-53; 11th ed. vol. IX, pp. 600-7.)

As such legal systems became elaborated, they inevitably affected the lives of people throughout Europe. Génicot described some of the effects:

... the local and traditional tribunals were more and more replaced by superior courts run by doctores who were not known and whose integrity (not without reason) was suspect, and who practised a new, the Roman, law, rather than the ancient customary one.

The state now advanced a claim, mainly under cover of this jus, to the entire ownership of waste, forest and water, and to their exclusive use, or at any rate the right to regulate arbitrarily their utilization. The villages also had to submit to orders from above and from distant places, and to officials sent from outside ...
(Génicot 1971, p. 701)

As states developed legal systems to protect the interests of rulers against the claims of the Church, those involved in developing statutes extended the legal rights of rulers over more and more of the activities and properties of their subjects.59 So, in succeeding centuries, conflict was to develop not only between Church and state, but also between the state and its people. As a result, emphasis was to be placed on the legal rights of individuals within the state against the state itself.

Increasingly, people and state were to become defined in oppositional terms.60 This change in emphasis was brought to a head in the 17th century in the writings of the Protestant jurist-theologians, chiefly by Hugo Grotius, whose principal work, œOn The Law of War and Peace, appeared in 1625. As Roscoe Pound (1921, pp. 89, 90) put it:

Grotius and those who followed him made reason the measure of all obligation. They conceived that the end for which law exists is to produce conformity to the nature of rational creatures

... at the very time that a victory of the courts in the contests between the common law courts and the Stuart kings had established that there were fundamental common-law rights of Englishmen which Englishmen must maintain in courts and in which courts would secure them even against the king, a juristic theory of fundamental human rights, independent of and running back of all states, which states might secure and ought to secure, but could not alter or abridge, had sprung up independently and was at hand to furnish a scientific explanation when the next century called for one.

By a natural transition, the common-law limitations upon royal authority became natural limitations upon all authority; the common-law rights of Englishmen became the natural rights of man.
(quoted in Grotius 1957, p. xiv)

Increasingly, during the medieval centuries, customary obligations and rights between people, not supported by written, legally acceptable documentation, could successfully be challenged by appeal to this developing system of legal statutes.

Of course, the experiences of various western European regions differed. In England there was no 'violent breach between folk-law and jurist law' (Cam 1957, p. 13) as experienced in some other areas of Europe with the establishment of Roman law as the law of the land and the supervention of customary law.

There seems to have been a stronger sense of independence amongst English law makers and practitioners, with the result that, by the reign of Henry VIII, common law had become separated from both Roman law and the canons. As Maitland observes,

Roman law was by this time an unintelligible, outlandish thing, perhaps a good enough law for half-starved Frenchmen. Legal education was no longer academic - the universities had nothing to do with it.
(see Cam 1957, p. 125)

English law had accommodated the 'customs of the realm'. In doing so, it provided rulers with a centralized, bureaucratically developed legal system which differed widely from the Roman law upon which Church authority and canons were established.

Henry II had set England on a legal course which resulted in an alternative base for legal authority to that used by the pope and by many of the monarchs of Europe. By the reign of Henry VIII, the king was able to appeal to this body of law as legal justification for independence from the Church. Common law had incorporated customary law, and in doing so had become immediately relevant to people at all levels of society.

For the English, to a degree found in few other regions of western Europe, both formal and informal mechanisms of dispute settlement involved attorneys and recourse to courts of law. Justices of the Peace were accessible to all or most members of society, and

...the total impression is that the multitude of overlapping courts and laws penetrated right down to the level of the lowest inhabitants, and that ordinary people had a good working knowledge of the national system of criminal law...
(Macfarlane 1987, p. 74)

and their own legal rights. Macfarlane claims that in Westmoreland, between 1550 and 1720, large numbers of villagers personally initiated complex legal actions against their fellows, which were heard in the central courts of England. 'English society was based on, and integrated by, two principal mechanisms - money and the law'.

The continuing conflict between Church and state in western Europe produced:

Education became an alternative avenue to status attainment. Feudal lords became increasingly dependent on educated people to run their bureaucratic machinery, and citizens increasingly needed access to legal expertise to protect themselves from the claims of both the state and fellow citizens.61 And with this emerging means of status attainment came an increasing emphasis on money income.

Since western Europe in this period was feudally organized, it was inevitable that key positions in the emerging bureaucracies were filled in the feudal manner, through the patronage of the royal household, rather than on the basis of educational training or legal expertise. So, within bureaucracies one had 'political' appointments to key positions, and people employed for their expertise and training under them.

Over succeeding centuries this arrangement was to produce increasing tension between educated 'experts' and feudally appointed principals. By the 17th century this tension had hardened into a strong conviction on the part of the educated (who, by allying themselves with various other protesters of the period, gained increasing power) that principal positions within state bureaucracies and private enterprise should be filled on the basis of educational achievement and demonstrated 'expertise', not on the basis of patronage.

In later years placement on the basis of education was to be regarded as achieved; placement on the basis of patronage was to be considered ascribed. Of course, feudal appointments were just as 'achieved' as those of the modern period within the capitalist framework; only the kind of activity through which one achieved was very different.62

The Aquinas Solution: Natural Law Distilled from Secular Experience Return to Chapter Index

As seems common at crisis points in western European history, at the time when Church and state confronted each other most directly, a person emerged who provided a philosophical construct from which both Church and state could argue.

Thomas of Aquinas (1225?-1274) was able to focus the debate and provide a logical construct which appeared to sum up and resolve the problem of the relationship between Church and state in the Church's favor. However, it was not long before princes, and those who worked for them, found in Aquinas's construct a justification for a separation of Church and state, each with its own set of laws, and each with its own independent rationale for existence.

Western Europe experienced a growing fascination with the work of Aristotle from the mid-12th century onwards. Aristotle's focus upon categorization of the particular within the sensible world was to result in the re-emergence of a focus on human beings as part of the natural world. As Ullman has suggested:

It was as if a new continent had been discovered - the discovery of man's real nature - and a new subject-matter was revealed. With every justification has it been said that there was a Renaissance, a rebirth of the long-forgotten natural man.
(Ullman 1965, p. 167)

This was a natural man firmly placed in his supernatural context. The medieval fascination with Aristotle received impetus when scholars recognized that he offered a means of defining a new kind of law - natural law - law which God had established as the principles through which the natural world was organized and sustained.

This new definition of natural law directly challenged the traditional understanding of natural law as canonical law. It seemed that a confrontation was brewing between Church and state. If Aristotle could be seen as inspired, as spelling out the natural laws of God in the natural world, then people who sought bases for secular law which were different from those underpinning Church, or supernatural, law could appeal to him.

Aquinas's new model and definition of natural law would provide a way of resolving the looming confrontation. Both were legitimate. The emerging definition of natural law referred to a subset of God's laws, those relating to material existence.

The term 'supernatural' was coined in the 13th century, at the time when there arose a strong need to differentiate clearly between two separate realms (cf. Murray 1978, p. 12). The spiritual realm was governed by spiritual laws, and the natural realm, and people, as creatures within that realm, were governed by natural laws. Human beings within society were governed, or ought to be governed, by laws which reflected those laws of nature.

God makes everything perfect. He had established laws for the governance of the spiritual realm, canonical law. He had also established laws for the governance of the secular world, natural law. Each set of laws would be found to be self-contained and perfect in its organization and functioning 63.

So, it was the responsibility of people in the secular realm to uncover the laws of nature, established by God for the smooth running of the secular realm, just as it was the responsibility of the Church to uncover and apply the laws God had established for the running of the Church and the spiritual realm. So Aquinas argued:

Now in human affairs a thing is said to be just from being right according to the rule of reason. But the first rule of reason is the law of nature ...

Consequently every human law has just so much of the character of law as it is derived from the law of nature. But if in any point it differs from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a corruption of law.
(Aquinas 1952, Pt 1: 2, Q. 95:2)[64 ]

Whereas the Church had defined 'natural law' as a set of rules spelt out in Scripture and Church canons, Aquinas affirmed the validity of the emerging definition of natural law which came from Roman jurisprudence 65 and Greek philosophy. To develop legal systems which reflected natural law, it was necessary to understand the 'nature' of human beings.

The claim by Aristotle, that civilization is based on people ordering their lives by instincts implanted in each individual,66 resurfaced in the high Middle Ages. But the definition of those instincts reflected the recognized needs of medieval society.67

In Aquinas's model we have a melding of the concepts of Roman jurisprudence and orthodox theology. The laws of nature should be sought, but, when found, would be discovered to be a coherent, immutable whole. If natural laws could be uncovered by examining the material world, the material world, in turn, would be found to be governed by sets of immutable laws established by God. By conforming to the laws established by God for the optimal performance of his creation, people could reasonably expect burgeoning prosperity.68

Human beings bridged the natural and spiritual realms. Spiritually, they were governed by laws of the spirit, and, naturally, they were governed by laws of nature. As Aquinas put it,

To the natural law belongs everything to which a man is inclined according to his nature.
(Aquinas 1952, Pt 1: 2, Q. 94:4)

An understanding of natural law required comprehension of the nature of human beings, and the nature of human beings could be determined by observing them within their social setting.

Aquinas's construct made Church law 'supernatural law' and laws of the state 'natural law'. According to Aquinas, there were natural laws to which all creation conformed, which were implanted in human beings and in a subservient relationship to divine law. Those who conformed to natural law conformed also to the will of God, as expressed in the natural order.

Natural and divine law were hierarchically related, not opposed to each other. And it was possible for people to live according to the dictates of natural law, with a this-worldly, secular focus to their lives, and yet be living in tune with the will and purpose of God. For the natural world was a law-directed whole, composed of parts which were perfectly placed within the whole through the operation of that law.69 So, Aquinas observed:

... natural processes develop from simple to compound things, so much so that the highly developed organism is the completion, integration, and purpose of the elements. Such indeed is the case with any whole in comparison with its parts.
(œGilby 1960, p. 369)

The natural and supernatural wholes were logically prior to their elements, which only existed as parts of the whole. Without the whole, there is no point or purpose in the existence of its elements. The parts were created because they were necessary to the whole. Individuals did not exist in or for themselves. They only existed as members of a society.

A perfect creation required perfect parts. It was, therefore, the responsibility of all people to live as God had intended they should. Otherwise, they could be held accountable for the trials and troubles visited upon people in this life. And the perfect society was that which, in all its forms and functions, conformed most closely to natural and spiritual law.

Aquinas set western Europe on the search for natural laws governing every area of life in this world. From this time onwards, western Europeans increasingly accepted that if a natural law was discovered, people had a moral and spiritual duty to live by it.

It was this quest which set western Europeans on a path which led to the eventual change from natural laws legitimized by God, to natural laws legitimized by rational logic 70, a move already prefigured in Aquinas's model. And, finally, as the secularism of the 18th and 19th centuries unfolded, to natural laws legitimized statistically 71. This made the elements primary and the characteristics of the wholes constructed from them determined by the characteristics of the elements72.

By the 17th century, although it was still accepted that natural law had been established by God, it was increasingly accepted that any phenomenon in the sensible world could be explained by reference to natural laws. The natural realm was a self-contained, self defining whole. So, one could 'explain' phenomena in the natural world without recourse to the divine. There were no exceptions.

Understanding of natural laws, coupled with rational extrapolation from those laws would provide a full understanding of the possibilities and potential of the natural realm. One could also, by rationally extrapolating from known laws, determine the likely existence and character of associated natural laws.

And all the while, western Europeans became increasingly aware that individuals had a moral duty to 'make the most' of themselves, to fulfill their lives, to 'develop their potential'.

With devout people proving their sincerity and morality through a life focused within this world, the responsibility of each person to strive for perfection through self-development became the prime obligation of life. They had to 'fulfill their potential' - as defined by 17th century 'responsible people'.

It was, equally, and for the same reason, their responsibility to ensure that they realized the potential of the resources placed in their hands. People who misused the 'talents' given to them by God could expect the fate of the indolent servant in Jesus' parable of the talents 73. Richard Baxter, in 1678, spelt this out very clearly:

If God show you a way in which you may lawfully get more than in another way (without wrong to your soul or to any other), if you refuse this and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your Calling, and you refuse to be God's steward, and to accept his gifts, and use them for him when he requireth it; you may labor to be rich for God, though not for the flesh and sin.
(1838, p. 377)

Then the greatest of all sins became, as Foucault has eloquently described, the sin of Sloth. To waste the life which God had given, or the resources he had placed in your hands, was not only a sin against oneself; it was a sin against society.

Initially, given the concerns of the age, the focus on natural law was a focus on social organization and activity. Natural was social, and the focus of intellectual inquiry, strongly influenced by the Investiture Conflict, was political.

Within a generation of Aquinas's teaching, those who had been seeking legal and philosophical foundations for the independent rights of kings from popes succeeded in separating natural law from canonical law and arguing for their entirely independent legitimacy and efficacy.

God had created separate, self-consistent, natural and supernatural worlds, each with its own set of laws defining the correct interrelations among the parts. It was in the interests of civil powers to insist on, and to provide philosophical justification for, the entirely separate development and efficacy of civil law.74

Over succeeding centuries this process was to produce recognition of a whole range of separately existing bodies of law relating to specific areas of the natural realm. Western Europe became convinced of the importance of written law as sets of basic principles through which elements in any whole could be perfected and combined and through which the whole gained its identity. To control the natural world, one needed to discover the sets of laws for such control. Knowledge of laws was power.

The search for systems of laws defining the correct interrelations among parts of logically constructed wholes had begun in earnest. And, because in the medieval world all law was enshrined within a guardian bureaucracy, the search for laws assumed such bureaucratic underpinning. Where a body of laws was uncovered there should be a bureaucratic body to safeguard, preserve and apply those laws.75

By the end of the 12th century western Europeans were already becoming aware of the potential political value of an understanding of the natural world. Alexander Neckham (1157-1217) claimed that when

the subtle truths that lurk in the very bosom of nature' had been uncovered, 'what enemies could withstand the kingdom that was able to triumph over [i.e. master] the sciences?'
(quoted in Murray 1978, p. 124).

With Aquinas's new interpretation of 'natural law', Western Europe quickly came to believe that, by uncovering the laws for the organization of the material environment, people could gain power to manipulate it in their own interests.

From the outset the recognized importance of establishing secular law as an independent, self-contained system was based on a pragmatic determination to use it in establishing secular independence, empowering the state. Knowledge of laws, and the ability to manipulate them, was power. The search for natural laws was, from the outset, accompanied by a belief that those who found them and learned to master them empowered people to exploit to the full the domains or environments governed by them.

During the later medieval period people became increasingly aware of both religious and secular corruption, as those with access to legal expertise used their power to disinherit those who had no access to it.

People felt less constrained by social obligation as hierarchical relationships became challenged with the growing abuse of power and authority in the medieval world. They therefore felt free to pursue private gain without the need for social justification. In fact, if one could gain an advantage through appeal to law, one could claim 'legitimacy' in making the most of that advantage.

Over succeeding centuries people increasingly learned to manipulate legal statutes to increase their private wealth, accepting fewer and fewer social responsibilities which were not required by written law. By the 17th century, people were able to challenge many of the customary responsibilities of earlier centuries in this way. Joseph Lee, a succinct spokesman for the cause of enclosure and independence espoused by new landowners in that century, could say:

Let it be granted that our land and businesse lying nearer together fewer servants will be kept; are any bound to keep more servants than are needful for their businesse; or may they not cast how to do the same businesse with least labor ... Is a man bound to keep servants to pill strawes or labor in vain? By what law? ...
(quoted in Appleby 1978, p. 61)76

'Money-making' patron-client networks and an emerging emphasis on quantification Return to Chapter Index

(12/03/18)

Prior to the 13th century, merchants were constantly on the move in an unending pursuit of profit. They were fringe dwellers, outside normal society, who challenged many of the central moral presumptions of the feudal period and were regarded with suspicion by upright citizens 77. In an endeavor to contain them and yet, at the same time, attract them to establish their bases in their territories, states established rules and regulations both governing their activities and defining the necessary obligations of people who interacted with them.

They formed a common-interest group who regulated their affairs amongst themselves on the basis of cooperative rather than competitive exchange. Because of their exclusion from feudal society, they formed parallel, informal networks of patron-client relationships among themselves. Over time, there emerged an informal ranking of the 'money makers' of western Europe and an intermeshing of their interests. They then used their wealth and collective power increasingly to subvert the feudal system. (Eight hundred years later, financial deregulation and 'globalization' of capitalism are similarly subverting national sovereignty and Democracy.)

By the 13th century the relationship between feudal leaders and the wealth holders of western Europe was increasingly based on transfers of wealth in return for feudal position.78 Those who gained wealth were able, from the outset, to use it to purchase position and recognition within feudal society. As they increasingly gained the upper hand, they were finally, in many regions of western Europe, to displace the feudal hierarchies with their own, alternative networks based on patron-client relationships.

Of course, as they gained political power, they increasingly influenced the exercise of government and the formation and implementation of law. By the 17th century, the foundations had been laid for the transformation of feudal structures into those which we now realize are required by capitalism.

The intermeshed patron-client networks of those engaged in wealth-accumulating activities remained important throughout Western Europe during the succeeding seven hundred years. Muldrew (1993: 163) has shown that during the early modern period, those who identified each other as engaged in similar activity within the marketplace 'stressed credit relations, trust, obligation and contracts' amongst themselves rather than unbridled individualistic profit making. They acted as common-interest groupings within patron-client networks.

Western European merchants travelled throughout the Mediterranean, into Egypt, through central Asia, and throughout western and northern Europe. They were not scholars. They were morally suspect adventurers, willing to incorporate any ideas or practices which might increase the profitability of their ventures.

Above all, what they needed was a clear, simple method of accounting and calculation. During their travels they encountered Muslim traders, who had gained a new form of calculation from northern India, based on the abacus. The abacus required a base-ten number calculation system which employed the zero to retain all place columns throughout calculation. Traders who accepted this new system gained great advantages in bargaining and exchange.

The ponderous Roman numbering system, enshrined in the literary, legal and political worlds, was cumbersome, made any attempts at either multiplication or division extremely complex, and was inappropriate to the use of the abacus. It was, however, for a variety of reasons, strongly supported by scholars.

Scholars, remaining wedded to the Roman system, had great difficulty in mastering the principles of the new mathematics - principles which required the use of the zero as a place holder. This produced a clear divergence between money makers and scholars, with the money makers of Europe gaining increasingly independent control over financial matters as their expertise outstripped that of people tied to the use of the Roman numbering system.

The new mathematics of the late medieval period was important in driving a wedge between scholarship and practical bookkeeping which has been reflected in the Western separation of the humanities from the sciences and commerce, ever since. It was also to mark the beginning of a developing interest in numeracy as a prime means of expressing the quantitative evaluation of individuals and groups (required by the emerging 'modern' social template which needed means for comparing the material worth of individuals).

While scholars depended on the existence of feudal society for their success, since scholarship was a means of upward mobility, merchants gained greater freedom of activity as feudal society weakened.

These developments occurred at the time when secular rulers were seeking increased independence from religious domination and were looking for people with the necessary skills to help them to become truly independent. High on the list of those who were most valued were those who had developed successful mercantile ventures. They were able to support secular rulers financially and to provide the kinds of skills necessary for the more efficient development of taxation and other forms of revenue earning and accounting. As Murray claims,

Authorities needed arithmetic because they, like merchants, had counting houses.
(Murray 1978, p. 195)

In western European capitals the expansion of legal bureaucracy was paralleled by the expansion of fiscal bureaucracies, and an area of law emerged, focusing on commercial activity.

By the reign of Henry II the English administration of finances was already being formally systematized, with its own sets of laws and regulations. This organization was spelt out in a descriptive handbook entitled the Dialogue of the Exchequer.

Similar developments occurred in both France and Germany, while in Italy a range of very sophisticated commercial techniques were developed, supported by handbooks of commercial practice. Those from the rest of Europe who wished to master the intricacies of double entry bookkeeping or buying and selling on credit travelled to Italy, where they were able either to enter employment in established business firms or to study the new methods of accounting and banking at schools and universities.

Regionally based administrations became stronger as the hierarchical interrelationships of feudalism weakened. They also became more formally organized and economically viable as the political structures supported by the administrations increased in stability.

The development of legal and fiscal institutions provided a base for bureaucratic government which had not existed in medieval feudal Europe. Over time, a rationale for government emerged which was different from that of feudalism, based on control of legal and fiscal bureaucracies and systems of law rather than on the personal allegiances of land holders.79

Autonomy and systems of law Return to Chapter Index

Through the later medieval period, towns arose as centers of commerce and trade. Europe was being reorganized to serve the patron-client interests of increasingly politically dominant 'money-makers'. This provided people (who were being displaced by the subversion of feudalism to serve money-making interests) with new means of livelihood. Merchants needed bases, markets, merchandise and security. They were to find all these in the newly forming urban areas.

As trade increased, the need for artisans grew to provide the merchandise for trading. Towns, gaining their prosperity from trading, consciously provided support to their traders and encouragement to merchants to relocate to their districts. Rural dwellers from estates near towns gravitated to them and became involved in the production of goods or in the provision of various services to other urban dwellers.

Most larger towns managed to distance themselves from feudal lords and laws, developing their own sets of laws and bureaucracies to administer them. The legal statutes of towns spelt out the rights and responsibilities of citizens, the legal relationships between towns and rural land holders, and the 'freedom' of citizens from the claims of rural lords and statutes.

In most towns there was a gradual evolution towards equality before the law and this equality came to be extended to unfree persons who settled in towns. "Town air makes free" became an important principle in medieval law.
(Koenigsberger 1987, p. 146)

In most towns of western Europe it became accepted that residence for a year and a day set serfs free from their obligations to the estate owners under whom they formerly served. In the minds of the inhabitants of western European towns, freedom and 'progress' became closely associated. Equally, rural laboring, servitude and domination by 'tradition' became conflated. For a laborer to better himself, he should do what the fabled Dick Whittington did in œthe folktale - go to town to seek his fortune80.

Since urban areas became identified with freedom from servitude and increased material wealth, and towns emphasized the importance of merchant activity, the merchant, from the mid-13th century onwards, slowly emerged as more of a hero than a rogue. In the minds of western Europeans, country life became equated with serfdom and tradition, town life with freedom and self-improvement.81

As Hertz observed,

the feudal disintegration of the central government .., gave many towns the opportunity of winning an almost republican independence.
(Hertz 1972, p. 57)

Where any region, however small in territorial extent, could successfully establish and maintain autonomous legal and fiscal bureaucracies for the government of the people, it could claim autonomy on the basis of the existence of these structures. The state became identified with control of bureaucracies which applied systems of laws and regulations. Those who controlled the bureaucracies controlled the state. Any territory which could successfully establish such bureaucracies and legal systems could claim autonomy.

The weakening of feudal institutions resulted in a range of demands on kings as pressures for self-government of regions within their territories mounted. Not only were regions within kingdoms claiming limited autonomy, they were also insistently demanding the limitation of legal prerogatives of the Crown.

While the Magna Carta was an unusually sweeping charter, similar limitations on the rights of rulers were being negotiated throughout western Europe.

Nearly everywhere in Europe kings acceded to such demands for the sake of peace at home and support for their foreign wars ... Everywhere rulers granted charters to cities in their territories, allowing them varying degrees of self-government.
(Koenigsberger 1987, p. 233)

The separation of states and commerce Return to Chapter Index

During the 13th and 14th centuries there arose, in western Europe, as in England, groups of well-to-do merchants, wealthy professionals and rural property holders. Either through direct purchase or through the judicious use of credit, they were able to gain control over increasing areas of land. Over time they developed into a country gentry with resources of their own on which they might call.

Landlords, where they claimed power over common lands, could see in them sources of revenue through sale which would in no way diminish the size of their domains. They increasingly claimed title to these lands and sold them to the highest bidders. Rural small holders, who required access to common land in order to supplement the inadequate returns from their holdings, found their access being denied, and increasing numbers were forced from their lands.

From personalized, cooperative hierarchical relationships to object-oriented, competitive oppositional relationships Return to Chapter Index

One could no longer, in the later medieval centuries, speak of any simplistic division of rural society into lords and peasants. Rather, there were some large landlords who controlled estates of considerable extent, with large numbers of resident villeins, and there were landowners with very small holdings, working for themselves and eking out a living which was little different from that of the feudal villein.

Between these extremes there was a large group of landlords who controlled estates of varying size, with varying numbers of dependent land holders, and with varying degrees of acceptability by those tenants.

Not only were there large and small property holders, there was also a growing number of property holders whose wealth came from commercial activity and who had strong links with towns. These land holders were 'owners' rather than holders. They had not acquired rights to property through feudal favor but through purchase.82 They therefore felt under less obligation to accept feudal responsibilities, either towards those who were hierarchically superior or towards those inferior to themselves.

Most lived in the country but conducted their business activities in towns. Gaining status from their rural addresses and wealth from their town pursuits, they were in a position to play one off against the other to their own advantage. In the process they became defined as separate from both town and country, an independent group who became increasingly aware that they could, by manipulating various systems of law, gain an advantage for themselves.

This group, in succeeding centuries, became identified as a common-interest group, an incipient 'class' with interests of their own which they should pursue.83 Their success in manipulating legal statutes to their own advantage made them a major force in western Europe and provided a class of 'owners', 'employers' and 'directors' as the emerging economic concerns of Europe became increasingly dominant.

Acting as the 'unions' and 'nations' of medieval Europe had acted, those who identified with the 'country gentry' saw themselves as having common interests, as sharing cooperative relationships with each other against opposing groups - the workers, the poor, the Crown, the 'idle rich'.

There was also a constantly expanding population of itinerant laborers who had lost access to land, or whose lands, without access to common land, were inadequate to meet their needs 84. They moved with the crops and seasons, employed, as needed, by land holders. They were coming to understand the world in terms which directly reflect the experience of those employed by others. As Thompson argues:

Those who are employed experience a distinction between their employer's time and their 'own' time. And the employer must use the time of his labor, and see that it is not wasted: not the task but the value of time when reduced to money is dominant. Time is now currency: it is not passed but spent.
(Thompson 1967, p. 61)

The relationship between the growing population of employed people and those who employed them was being transformed from one of hierarchical responsibility into one based on wage labor, with employers and employed, landowners and tenants being increasingly seen as opposed groups.

With decreasing populations in the later 14th and early 15th centuries, and opportunities abounding for material advancement for those who wished it, the emphasis on material returns for labor input greatly increased:

The Black Death ... brought a sense of urgency, especially in urban areas. The work day was extended and night work became common as merchants sought greater profits and workers, higher wages ...

Clocks and the rhythmic chimes of bells became more important than ever ...

By the end of the century, 'merchant's time', rather than 'the traditional conception of time in Christian theology', became the rule.
(Gottfried 1983, p. 81)85

In the process, there developed a need for the determination of starting and finishing times in work.86 It became a common practice, perpetuated over several hundred years, for early morning and curfew bells to be sounded to alert people to the start and end of the working day.

As one, by-lined P.Q., wrote in an item in the February 17th, 1838 edition of The Mirror : in 1644, Richard Palmer of Workingham had left a bequest to the town ensuring that in future the great bell of the Workingham Church was to be rung for half an hour daily at 4am and again at 8pm:

... that as many as might live within the sound might be thereby induced to a timely going to rest in the evening, and early arising in the morning to the labors and duties of their several callings, (things ordinarily attended and rewarded with thrift and proficiency)
... the same being done in most of the cities and market towns, and many other places in the kingdom.
(œThe Mirror No. 879, 17th February, 1838, p. 98)

During this period of feudal decay the peasants of Europe, in the words of Blum, threw off:

... the bonds that held them in serfdom. Nonetheless, they still owed servile obligations to seigniors, and they were still subject, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the locality, to the jurisdiction and punitive authority of seigniors.

Some historians have made much of the fact that the dependence or servility of these peasants was not attached to their persons (as it was to the person of a serf). Rather, they argue that the dependence adhered to the land. It became part of the price the peasant paid for the use of his holding to the seignior who had the superior ownership of the land.
(Blum 1978, p. 33)

This progressive transference of rights and responsibilities from person - person hierarchical relationships 87 to person - property - person oppositional relationships, often confused and ambiguous during the 14th to 16th centuries in western Europe (and during the 17th to 19th centuries in much of eastern Europe), removed direct responsibility for the welfare of tenants from landlords and resulted in an increasing sense of alienation.

Landlords were increasingly able to demand servility as a cost to the tenant, and the land holder or rural laborer increasingly objectified such costs as the price of the land or of employment. This social distancing of rural poor and landlord distorted recognized social relationships, emphasizing the differences and decreasing the recognized commonalities between them. Cooperative, interdependent relationships were being displaced by oppositional, independent relationships, mediated through legal statutes governing the ownership and use of property.

During the 19th century Marx was to comment on these developments, arguing that, over time, the dependence of the serf on the lord of the manor became increasingly transformed into apparent independence with the individual 'hemmed in on all sides by material relations' (Fischer & Marek 1973, p. 57). Increasingly, the rights and responsibilities of individuals to each other became legally spelt out and materially measurable, objectified. These obligations could then be traded in the same way as other objects.

That is, the rights and responsibilities implicit in social relations could be treated as rewards and costs and the potential labor input of the obligation could be evaluated against labor inputs into commodities. One could calculate the money worth of social obligations. This development did not do away with the obligations; it only made the individual who owed them appear to be independent of those to whom the obligations were owed. As Marx perceptively observed of the production of commodities:

... it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things ...

This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
(Marx 1887, p. 43)

Since the obligations were costs attached to the land worked by the tenant, the tenant could be seen as independent of the landlord to whom the obligations were owed. Previously hierarchical obligations and responsibilities were transformed into 'terms of rent' and attached to the property rather than to the people involved.

A social relation between individuals had assumed 'in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things'. The focus of Europeans was being fixed on the legal obligations and quantifiable costs of social interaction, attached to or incorporated into the object of any exchange, rather than the persons involved in the interaction.88

Increasingly, over succeeding centuries, people were to see all social relationships in terms of costs and rewards within a legalized framework of obligations and rights. What was gained and what was lost through social interaction became the determinants of social exchange.

The focus of interaction was on the products rather than the participants. One could now aim to minimize costs and maximize personal gains with less and less consideration of social responsibilities not spelt out in legislation. Social relationships were being reduced in form to commercial transactions.89

The alienation of property and stress on legally bounded confrontation Return to Chapter Index

The focus of life was increasingly on the gains and losses of interactions. This competitive calculation of costs and rewards was coupled with an emerging belief in the morality of 'realizing the potential' of one's resources; and with burgeoning possibilities of both attaining and enhancing status by accumulating wealth with which to purchase estates.

Business people and country gentry therefore saw it as more and more important to use their assets to generate increased wealth. In order for landlords to increase their personal incomes from their holdings it was necessary to rationalize land holding and land use practices.

This focus on reducing costs and increasing profits resulted in permanent reductions in the number of people living off the land, the consolidation of land holdings, and increasing farm size, together with alterations in land use practices. In turn, these developments could only lead to increasing tension between landlords and tenants and increasing alienation (see 16th Century Land Alienation for a contemporary account of this alienation).

During the 15th century, as population increased again, increasing numbers of rural dwellers were displaced from their holdings. The number of itinerant laborers moving with the seasons, crops and availability of work escalated, and towns' populations rapidly expanded.

Increasingly, it became a fact of life that the person without an inalienable legally recognized right to property was at the mercy of those who controlled the means of livelihood. Any person who was materially or socially dependent on another gave that person material power over him or her. One needed to own property (that is, have written, legal entitlement to exclusive possession) in order to maintain social and material independence.

The small holders and laborers of western Europe were forced, by bitter experience, to re-evaluate their relationship to feudal hierarchies and find alternative bases for social and economic security. The natural direction in which this took them was towards the personal legal ownership of land and other means of livelihood, with all the rights and responsibilities of ownership spelt out in legislation and attached to the property.

Using Law to Rob the Poor and Dispossess the Weak Return to Chapter Index

Europe was passing through a period of profound political, social, religious and intellectual change. And, as with all such fundamental change, affecting and being affected by alterations in the primary presumptions of thought and organization, people became less and less sure of themselves and those around them.

From the 15th century onwards, as Foucault so graphically describes,

...the face of madness has haunted the imagination of Western man.
(Foucault 1971, pp. 15) 90

Nothing made any sense.

A contemporary comment from the 1350s paints a graphic picture:

justice and pity were powerless, so soon as it appeared advantageous to murder or poison rivals in power at the hospitable board. The science of finance was reduced to robbery, politics to perjury ... .
(quoted in Nohl 1961, p. 96)

The miracle play of Theophil included sentiments which summed up the mood of the age:

O Thou thoroughly wicked God, if I could but lay hands on Thee! Truly I would tear Thee to pieces. I deny Thee, deny Thy faith and Thy power. I will go to the Orient, turn Mussulman, and live according to the law of Mahomet. He is a fool who puts his trust in Thee!
(quoted in Nohl 1961, p. 97)

People seemed able to apply the laws, established by God for the more perfect organization and functioning of society, to personal gain, to robbing the poor, to dispossessing the weak, to denying long-established social responsibilities. And the justifications they gave for their actions did not make sense in terms of the understandings of the feudal world.

While their actions could be justified by law, they contravened all the sensibilities of medieval people. They had long assumed that society was organized in terms of complementary, cooperative hierarchies, with the hierarchically superior taking responsibility for the welfare of those under their protection.

With the fundamental assumptions of communities in a state of change and disarray, people found it difficult to keep control of reality. There were too many conflicting and contradictory understandings of life, and it was increasingly difficult to know who or what to believe. Europeans became increasingly aware, and fearful, of the effects of madness, of people whose view of the world did not 'make sense', who flirted with 'forbidden wisdom'. As Foucault says:

What does it presage, this wisdom of fools? Doubtless, since it is a forbidden wisdom, it presages both the reign of Satan and the end of the world ...

Apocalyptic dreams are not new, it is true, in the 15th century; they are, however, very different in nature from what they had been earlier. The delicately fantastic iconography of the 14th century ... where the order of God and its imminent victory are always apparent, gives way to a vision of the world where all wisdom is annihilated ...

Victory is neither God's nor the Devil's: it belongs to Madness ... On all sides, madness fascinates man.
(Foucault 1971, pp. 22,23)

During this period the movement towards the enclosure of common land and the rationalization of land holding and land use produced severe social distortions. As Polanyi has described:

Enclosures have appropriately been called a revolution of the rich against the poor. The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of violence, often by pressure and intimidation. They were literally robbing the poor of their share in the common, tearing down the houses which by the hitherto unbreakable force of custom, the poor had long regarded as theirs and their heirs'.

The fabric of society was being disrupted, desolate villages and the ruins of human dwellings testified to the fierceness with which the revolution raged, endangering the defences of the country, wasting its towns, decimating its population, turning its overburdened soil into dust, harassing its people and turning them from decent husbandmen into a mob of beggars and thieves.
(Polanyi 1957, p. 35)

Monarchies of the Reformation period, increasingly despotic, looked for support from the common population against an increasingly independent rural gentry who were challenging feudal responsibilities and insisting on the logic of what we now call 'economic rationality'. As Polanyi claims, the Tudors and Stuarts of England used the power of central government to relieve the victims of this transformation in property rights and, in the process, gained the increasingly vociferous opposition of those who stood to benefit from enclosure, the rural gentry.

The monarchies of western Europe and their bureaucracies were essentially feudal, not business-oriented. Political power in the 16th century still rested with hierarchies whose positions were legitimized by their relationship to the Crown, not by their control of material resources.

The 'money-making' gentry and the feudally oriented political hierarchies of Europe were increasingly seeing their interests in oppositional rather than hierarchical terms. This confrontation produced an expansion and elaboration of the centralized legal system, developed through preceding centuries, to incorporate rules and regulations governing relationships between state and rural gentry and commercial interests. Another elaboration spelt out the relationships between landowners and tenants and between employers and employees.

The state, through its legal bureaucracies, became an intermediary between tenant and landowner, between employer and employee. Legal systems therefore became more detailed, spelling out the rights and obligations between subjects as well as those between subjects and princes.

Blum (1978, p. 60ff) has succinctly spelled out the consequences of this movement for peasants and seigniors on the European continent. Over time the obligations of tenant and landowner, employer and employee, became standardized, with labor commitment, tithe of produce, and cash payments becoming increasingly objectified by statute. Peasants or workers - who dared - could appeal to the courts if they considered themselves unfairly treated.

In England the scene was a little different. During the 15th century legal developments resulted in the spelling out of a comprehensive law of contract. According to Maitland, the bonds of family settlements through which land had been tied up within kin groups were loosened, so that each inheritor gained alienable title, and villein tenure was converted into the secure copyhold tenure of modern times (see Cam 1957, p. 126).

This removal of responsibility for the tenant's welfare from landlord to state, from the feudal person - person hierarchical relationship of the lord and tenant, to a person - state bureaucracy - person oppositional relationship profoundly affected medieval understandings of the world. It was part of a general movement towards the interpolation of a non-personal, apparently objective legal framework in terms of which interpersonal relationships (increasingly being identified as a body of interactions relating to a particular 'environment' - the economic) could be assessed and limited.

As the rights and responsibilities of interactants were legally objectified, knowledge of the law became a means of maximizing profits. One needed to know the statutes. Prest explained it well:

the Elizabethan and early Stuart gentry learnt their law ... from the various manuals and texts designed specifically to meet the needs of landlords and J. P.s.
(Prest 1967, p. 21)

Strong emphasis was placed on legal knowledge as a means of protecting one's interests against opposing groups.

Inns of Court, the principal legal schools of the period in England,

attracted two classes of students: those who sought to become lawyers, and those whose parents "do not desire them to be trained in the science of the laws, or to live by its practice, but only by their patrimonies".
(Prest 1967, p. 22)

Those who owned estates needed to know the law in relation to estate ownership. The Inns of Court had become 'the nurserie of the greater part of the gentrie of the realme' (Prest 1967, p. 22).

While the poor had to hire the services of lawyers - whose fees, as we have already seen, were considered exorbitant - the gentry were being trained to defend their legal rights to property. Legal power was on the side of landlords and employers. And they were being trained to view relationships as based on legal definition and confrontation.

The 'modern' world would be one in which people identified themselves in terms of classes, hierarchically ranked through their former statuses within feudal society, with the 'higher' having access to legal expertise not available to the 'lower', and considering themselves the 'natural' directors of 'lower' classes. Society was becoming divided into competing common-interest groups, into embryonic classes, whose confrontations would be framed by state legislation.91

Private ownership, consumption and accumulation Return to Chapter Index

As previously feudal relationships became legally objectified, the possibility of making demands of tenants and rural laborers without considering them as people became increasingly conceivable. With landlords and employers decreasingly needing to confront tenants and employees as persons with whom they shared direct social relationships, it became possible to whittle away the rights of the poor.

Jurists steadily reduced the tenants' right of freedom and movement; allowed landlords to raise their demands for labor service beyond long-accepted norms; and steadily weakened the security that attached to customary rural tenures. And employers successfully argued for state legislation compelling the poor to work.

This attenuation of recognized social obligation deepened the emphasis on freeholding and private enterprise so that, by the 16th century, as Christopher Hill observed,

when the business man of ... Geneva, Amsterdam or London looked into his inmost heart, he found that God had planted there a deep respect for the principle of private property.
(Hill 1966, p. 46)

Increasingly, to ensure social and physical well-being, people had to own what they needed. This requirement placed mounting demands on production, fuelling a growth in commodity output.

Demonstrating to others that one was materially independent or self-sufficient gave one increased status and prestige. It became increasingly 'obvious' that property should be privately owned, and that such ownership was ownership of the thing itself, not merely of socially approved rights to its use. The principle of private property was undeniably a natural law principle. Those who could demonstrate such ownership, demonstrated their moral and therefore social worth.

During the 16th century in much of western Europe (and a century or two later in most eastern areas), as Blum argues:

... monarchs had managed to divest the nobility of much of its political power as a corporate entity. Yet the nobles not only continued but were strengthened in their social position and in their claim to special privilege, and they retained and broadened their claim to the land, labor, dues, and subservience of the peasantry.
(Blum 1978, p. 197)

Monarchies managed to secure their own political positions and emasculate the political authority of the nobility and powerful landowners by granting legally sanctioned privilege to them at the expense of the poor.

The reduction of political responsibilities and the reaffirmation of legal and economic entitlements led in turn to the development of absentee landlords. They left their estates in the hands of managers and lived in an increasingly profligate manner. This required excessive borrowing, often against either the future production of estates or the value of the estate itself. As McCracken described:

In the last quarter of the 16th century, a spectacular consumer boom occurred. The noblemen of Elizabethan England began to spend with a new enthusiasm, on a new scale. In the process they dramatically transformed their world of goods and the nature of Western consumption ...

They changed their patterns of hospitality as well, vastly inflating its ceremonial character and costs. Elizabethan noblemen entertained one another, their subordinates, and, occasionally, their monarch at ruinous expense.
(McCracken 1988, p.11)

This situation was tailor-made for the mercantile capitalists of the 15th and 16th centuries. Having inherited the entrepreneurial skills and the structures of medieval capitalism and mobile capital, they were able to relocate their enterprises and take advantage of the profligacy of nobility to accumulate sizeable fortunes. Yet, once having accumulated their fortunes and having purchased the rundown estates of those whose profligacy had been their undoing, they found themselves expected to live in the same extravagant manner.

There developed a tension between increasing consumption and conserving one's gains for further expansion of one's holding which required increased stress on the material productivity of estates. As Mukerji says:

... the hedonistic culture of mass consumption was probably as crucial in shaping early patterns of capital development in Europe as the asceticism usually associated with this era. Hedonism was to consumers what asceticism was to entrepreneurs: it provided the cultural rationale for increased interest and participation in economic activities.
(Mukerji 1983, p. 2)

The new emphasis on conspicuous consumption coincided with a strong expansion in commodity output, which provided burgeoning incomes to those who controlled commerce. In a period of rapid economic expansion, entrepreneurs could both indulge in the hedonistic consumerism of the age and greatly expand their mercantile interests, funded by the new wealth.

The rise of Antwerp as the financial capital of Europe in the late 15th and early 16th century coincided with the opening up of the Portuguese spice trade and the conquest of the Americas by Spain. These developments stimulated entrepreneurial activities throughout most of western Europe and further fuelled the growth of commercial activity. Western Europe entered into a prolonged economic boom which coincided with the growing emphases on conspicuous consumption, material independence, and the use of holdings to generate increasing surpluses.

This was an age of merchant houses, acting across territorial boundaries and developing their own sense of identity as semi-independent political, as well as economic, enterprises.92 Princes, seeing in the granting of monopolies to merchant houses another way of raising revenue and of tying merchant houses into the political structure, granted to them exclusive rights to trade in certain goods. Joyce Appleby described the process:

... the king had long had the power to grant monopolies, which took the form of issuing licenses for the exclusive public control of a product, a trade, or even a government service like the inspection of tobacco. James found the granting of monopolies a particularly facile way of increasing his income.

A typical Englishman, as Christopher Hill noted, lived 'in a house built with monopoly bricks ... heated by monopoly coal ... His clothes were held up by monopoly belts, monopoly buttons, monopoly pins ... he ate monopoly butter, monopoly currants, monopoly red herrings, monopoly salmon, monopoly lobsters' ...

With the growth of both the internal and external markets, monopolies distorted the whole pattern of trade.
(Appleby 1978, p. 33)

What started out as being to the advantage of mercantile entrepreneurs became another means of revenue collection, a further drain on business houses which already saw themselves as separate from, and using, the state in which they operated. As Appleby pointed out, increasing numbers of traders, who found their activities severely curtailed by monopolies, began insisting that the right to free trade (that is, the abolition of state controls on production and sale) was a basic human right, a natural law right which, since Aquinas, made it a legally required right.

Over a period of more than a century the money makers of western Europe came to oppose the granting of monopolies. They argued increasingly forcefully for the separation of political and economic activity and increased autonomy for merchant houses to act on their own, in their own interests without government prohibitions.

Free trade was to imply not only the right of traders to trade, but also the reduction of government restrictions on trade. Traders should not be subject to political or social restrictions on their activities. Rather, laws and regulations should be passed which guaranteed individuals and businesses freedom to pursue their own independent interests without interference from the state.

Increasingly, what we now unhesitatingly define as economic concerns became distinguished from the political and social concerns of the period, the province of a common-interest grouping which included country gentry, traders, merchants, financiers and manufacturers. They demanded greater autonomy, and government interests demanded greater control of this newly emerging environment.

The role of government was being redefined by this common-interest group as the provision of a secure fiscal, legal and social background to commercial activity, not the regulation of business. Business should operate under its own laws and regulations, those which applied to the economic world.

By arguing for the existence of a separate environment, a realm which was governed by its own internal principles and logic, those who saw themselves as operating within that environment could advocate its independence from state control. It should conform to its own laws. And such laws would necessarily facilitate business activity, providing a dependable set of rules governing business transactions which would ensure the consistency of economic decisions and planning. Inevitably, those rules and regulations reflected the emerging relationships of the period.

Many members of this business-oriented group looked with some contempt on those whose self-indulgence led to the dissipation of their inherited wealth.93 It was clearly not in their interests to support monarchical regimes of similar temper which saw them as sources of ready income through taxation. Most either applied pressure on regimes for reform of business regulation and control or moved their centers of operation to areas where such reform was already occurring.

The Renaissance state of the 16th century supported bureaucracies which, from the 20thcentury perspective, would be considered very corrupt. No clear distinction was made between the office and the office holder, and the expenses of office were not clearly distinguished from those unconnected with the office.

The rulers of western Europe were not business people; they were traditional rulers, supported by a nobility which was feudally justified. While the emerging nations of Europe supported bureaucracies, those bureaucracies were organized in ways which facilitated patron-client access to the wealth, information and influence which they focused. The personalized bureaucracies of patron-client states are organized and operate on very different principles from those of Western industrialized states.

Bureaucratic posts were tied into the traditional systems of leadership and patronage. Those who identified with the business and new property interests of the period found themselves in conflict with the traditional, non-business-oriented claims and requirements of the bureaucracies with which they were forced to deal. It became increasingly 'obvious' to money makers that those appointed to bureaucratic offices were a drain on their resources, not there to facilitate their activities but to put obstacles in their way.

This belief led to an increasing insistence that the roles of bureaucratic offices should be clearly defined and limited, and that a clear distinction should be made between the bureaucratic office and the office holder. Holders of offices should be trained for their posts and paid stipends, and should not assume that they could use their offices as means of generating income.94 As Trevor-Roper claimed:

To cut down the oppressive, costly sinecures of Church and State, and to revert, mutatis mutandis, to the mercantilist policy of the cities, based on the economic interest of society - such were the two essential methods of avoiding revolution in the 17th century.
(Trevor-Roper 1972, p. 77)

During the 16th century religious demands for reform of the Roman Church changed into demands for independence and for the removal of Church authority. By the 17th century there was a strong belief amongst Protestants, property holders and business people that 'responsible' people, primarily those who belonged to the educated and business communities, should be freed from state and Church interference. They should be able to 'develop' themselves, both spiritually and materially, unhindered by state and Church bureaucratic demands.

Entrepreneurs favored the decentralization of political control for business reasons and found themselves in accord with Protestant groups advocating decentralization for other reasons. Inevitably, the arguments of the various groupings became intermixed, with Protestants making claims which could more easily be understood from a mercantile position, and mercantile entrepreneurs supporting arguments which seemed primarily religious in character.

The growth of mercantile power coincided with the decay of feudal structures and a decreasing acceptance of responsibility for the welfare of their tenants by landowners. By the turn of the 17th century increasing wealth, flowing from imperial expansion, coupled with expanded trade between regions of western Europe, provided a buffer against the unfolding effects of land enclosure and the appropriation of peasant holdings by landowners.

As rural people became displaced, many of them drifted into towns where they could obtain some form of employment. Movement into towns was traditionally linked with the freedom of the individual from obligation to landowners. A presumption of independence accompanied this movement, which naturally allied these displaced rural-urban migrants with a pragmatic Puritanism which emphasized the independent, private rights of individuals against both Church and state.

This sense of independence was coupled with a strong sense of injustice at being displaced from rural holdings which had long been their means of livelihood and identity. Those who should have provided feudal protection had failed them. Traditional authorities could no longer be trusted to protect the rights of the poor and, increasingly, they would be prepared to align themselves with those who opposed such authority.95

From the subversion of tradition to plotting the future Return to Chapter Index

(05/02/18)

By the turn of the 17th century there was a growing sense among business people, Puritans and the dispossessed that those who claimed authority on the basis of tradition, whether prelates, princes or bureaucrats, should be displaced by those better fitted to govern, who complied with the natural law requirements of the age.

They too should have the law applied to them, and people should be protected by law from the excesses of a leadership which seemed out of step with the pragmatic business concerns of the age. The 'property-owning, money-making' people of western Europe became increasingly aware that their interests did not coincide with the interests of those who controlled the state bureaucracies of Europe.

There was a feeling in western Europe that life was improving. The terrible uncertainties of the 15th and 16th centuries were being replaced by a dawning sense that the future would be better than the past. The awareness of an uncontrolled madness in the air, which Foucault described, was being displaced by a sense that Europeans, by devoting themselves to the reform of society, could take control of their own destinies.

But, as we have seen, the reform of society required, first, the reform of the person. Those who wanted to reform society recognized that such a change required the reformation of individuals. Individuals should apply themselves to self-development, to self-improvement. Then society would indeed be reformed.96

While the world was still in turmoil, the primary ideological assumptions of the emerging dominant groups in western Europe were becoming more certain. Amongst 'responsible' people 97, those who were demanding increasing freedom and control in western Europe, the feudal thinking of the past was being displaced by what we now term 'modern' ways of understanding the world. Now, if western Europeans could ensure that people lived by the laws being uncovered in the natural and social worlds they would surely usher in a golden age of prosperity.

Thinkers of the 17th century applied themselves to utopian schemes and dreams. Whether in the writings of Bacon or Campanella, Comenius or Dury, of Hartlib or Hobbes, social philosophy became the discernment of necessary alterations in the present to ensure the realization of a better future. And, it was assumed, the necessary alterations could be ascertained through reasoned consideration of the natural laws which underwrote all valid human activity and organization. The protesters of western Europe became increasingly sure of themselves, aware that they had a destiny to fulfill.

Samuel Hartlib (or possibly Gabriel Plattes), author of a treatise on the requirements of the 'perfect society', A Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria (1641), œquoting Petty (1649), claimed that the whole world should be reformed:

[T]hat ... the whole World may bee enhappined and all at last come to live in plenty and peace etc. and all warr's cease.

Such reformation could only happen, however, if those who were determined to ensure it had the political authority to set the necessary changes in place.

There was indeed a tide in the affairs of men which taken at its flood would lead to the millennium. The future would be better than the present - provided that society was reorganized to allow people to fulfill their own private destinies and, in the process, bring into being a perfect society based upon the natural laws established by God and being spelt out by Hugo Grotius98 and other jurists.

If Aquinas was correct, and each person had a place and purpose in society, then society could only be reformed if individual people were reformed, 'realizing their potential' by living their lives in accordance with the natural laws which God had established. 99 'Responsible' Western Europeans (those who were becoming recognized as the 'middle ranks') were becoming conscious of the goal-oriented nature of life in this world. The individual life should demonstrate progress. An individual should aim at self-improvement, and self-improvement could only be judged through increasing mastery over the material world around one.

Over a period of more than three hundred years, economically oriented western Europeans moved to a focus on the future, a condemnation of tradition as a validation of action or organization, and an assumption that progress in this world was inevitable for those who obeyed the laws of God. Therefore, those who did not progress could be assumed to have not been obedient to the laws of God. As Gellner put it:

The consequence of a belief in progress ... is that time ceases to be morally neutral ... there is, at the very least, some predisposition to tie up past with bad (in one word: backward), and future with good (progressive).
 (Gellner 1978, p. 3)

From the late 15th century onwards, with the writing of Erasmus and More, the responsibility of western Europeans for securing the future had become a preoccupation of western Europe. Europe was alive with millenarian speculation and interpretations of the apocalypse. This time of turmoil and madness was surely the time preceding the return of Christ, and that would herald the arrival of the perfect age.

Before that day, the events spelt out in the Revelation of John 100 would be fulfillled. The Anti-Christ would be bound and cast into a pit which would be shut and sealed over him for a thousand years. The Beast would be captured and cast into the 'lake of fire that burns with brimstone'. And those who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands would reign with Christ in a perfect society of the blest for a thousand years.

For the subsequent four hundred years the social philosophers of western Europe were to focus on the required precursors of the millennial age which was surely almost upon the world. So institutionalized did this focus become that philosophers were to forget its origins, were to accept its societal assumptions, with their implicit religious underpinnings, without acknowledging them. Europe engaged in a quest for utopia - assumed to be attainable - and in a discovery of the necessary social alterations which must occur to ensure its arrival.

Europe became focused on the future - a real and yet, at the same time, an ideal future towards which the present should be molded. And, because people were now becoming recognized as self-developing, independent and opposed to one another, the attainment of the ideal depended on the diligence with which individuals ensured that they fulfillled the potential of their separate lives.

In the political arena, no less than the philosophical, there was an air of expectancy and of duty. As Trevor-Roper has eloquently put it:

[Oliver Cromwell] believed that a new heaven and a new earth were coming ... and that Christian men had a duty, while reforming the society around them, and gathering up their strength to beat back the temporarily triumphant Anti-Christ, to seek the key to the Scriptures, which were now being fulfillled: the vials that were being poured out, the trumps that were being sounded, and the inscrutable number of the Beast.
(Trevor-Roper 1972, p. 282)

As Hartlib claimed, Europeans were in the process of uncovering 'that model by which the whole world should be reformed' and of ensuring its practical outworking in this world.

Since the millennium was within reach of western Europeans, people had a duty to apply themselves to ensuring its arrival. For the next three hundred years the 'responsible' people of western Europe undertook to organize those who were 'not responsible', ensuring that they lived moral, productive lives. As Polanyi explained,

under Elizabethan law the poor were forced to work at whatever wages they could get and only those who could [demonstrably] obtain no work were entitled to relief.
(Polanyi 1957, p. 79)

The view that the able-bodied poor should be put to work reinforced an emerging belief in the need for employment as both an obligation and a duty. Those who were gaining political and economic control of western Europe were becoming convinced that the promised utopia would be realized only if people diligently applied themselves to whatever work was available. The state should ensure that employment was available for those without work, and there should be no charity in the form of unearned hand-outs.

Yet, in the early 17th century, this was more easily said than done. As Foucault described:

Despite all the measures taken to avoid unemployment and the reduction of wages, poverty continued to spread in the nation. In 1622 appeared a pamphlet, Grievous Groan for the Poor, attributed to Thomas Dekker, which ... condemns the general negligence:

Though the number of the poor do daily increase, all things yet worketh for the worst in their behalf; ... many of these parishes turneth forth their poor, yea, and their lusty laborers that will not work ... to beg, filch, and steal for their maintenance, so that the country is pitifully pestered with them.

It was feared that they would overrun the country, and since they could not, as on the Continent, cross the border into another nation, it was proposed that they be 'banished and conveyed to the New-found Land, the East and West Indies'.

In 1630, the King established a commission to assure the rigorous observance of the Poor Laws ... it recommended prosecuting beggars and vagabonds, as well as 'all those who live in idleness and will not work for reasonable wages or who spend what they have in taverns'. They must be punished according to law and placed in houses of correction.
(Foucault 1971, pp. 49-50)

The necessity to work had become recognized either as a requirement of natural law which, of course, made it an inescapable obligation, or as a requirement of sanctification. As Foucault put it:

If it is true that labor is not inscribed among the laws of nature, it is enveloped in the order of the fallen world. This is why idleness is rebellion - the worst form of all ... the sin of idleness is the supreme pride of man once he has fallen, the absurd pride of poverty ...

In the Middle Ages, the great sin ... was pride ... All the 17th century texts, on the contrary, announced the infernal triumph of Sloth: it was sloth which led the round of vices and swept them on.
(Foucault 1971, pp. 56-7)

Joyce Appleby claimed that

laws were not seen as coming down from authority; rather they worked up from the propensities of people. Policy makers could best realize their aims by working with the known nature of man.
(1978, p. 96)

All people were ruled by the same natural tendencies and biases, so it was possible to formulate legislation which could be applied to everyone, no matter what their status or position. Good law was universally applicable.

Of course, since, as Roscoe Pound (1921) observed, the natural laws sprang from the common law rights of 17thcentury society, in fact they closely reflected the social circumstances in which they were formulated. Louis Dumont has said of this focus on the propensities of human beings as the basis for law that:

For the moderns, under the influence of Christian and Stoic individualism, natural law, as opposed to positive law, does not involve social beings but individuals, i.e. men each of whom is self-sufficient, as made in the image of God and as the repository of reason.

This is to say that, in the idea of jurists in the first place, first principles regarding the constitution of the state (and of society) have to be extracted, or deduced, from the inherent qualities of man taken as an autonomous being independently of any social or political attachment.

... in short, the hierarchical Christian Commonwealth was atomised at two levels: it was replaced by a number of individual states, themselves made up of individual men.
(Dumont 1965, pp. 29-30)

Those who were morally upright disciplined themselves, living by the natural laws which underwrote all reasonable human endeavor.

This emerging focus on independent individuals was strongly supported by Puritanical insistence on the independent rights of individuals to approach their God directly without relying on mediation by a professional hierarchy. However, the apparent consequences of this insistence on separate rights seemed to be social chaos.

Many people became disturbed by the apparent civil consequences of Puritanical insistence on the rights of independent individuals. Bertrand Russell has neatly summed up the fears of the mid-17th century:

Every community is faced with two dangers, anarchy and despotism.

The Puritans, especially the Independents, were most impressed by the danger of despotism.

Hobbes, on the contrary having experienced the conflict of rival fanaticisms, was obsessed by the fear of anarchy.
(Russell 1979, p. 539)

If one emphasized independent individual rights, one had, simultaneously, to spell out independent individual responsibilities.

Moral people abided by the terms of the social contract. Their lives conformed to the natural law requirements of all members of society. And those natural laws could not be challenged. They had been established by God. If, as Newton was to demonstrate and Galileo had already described, the planets obeyed natural laws when orbiting the sun, equally, members of society obeyed natural laws when they conformed to the moral rules of society.

By the mid-17th century, with the English revolution, political power in England passed into the hands of property owners. For almost two hundred years they had been arguing for the curtailment of power derived from tradition. Laws which stemmed from 'traditional' authority were increasingly regarded as suspect.

The legal systems of western Europe, but particularly of Britain, were being refashioned to reflect the basic assumptions underpinning what we now call 'democracy'. Protestant jurist-theologians provided the theoretical charter based upon the natural rights of human beings. This gave legitimacy to the individualism of Protestant and merchant groups and to an increasingly insistent demand for economic and political freedom to pursue one's own interests.

In the Europe of decaying feudalism, land ownership had become increasingly seen as ownership of the thing itself, with particular social and material costs and prices attaching to it. Not only was there an emerging recognition of the differences between government and people, there was a parallel recognition of the difference between people and their physical environments.

It was becoming increasingly certain to most western European landowners that people used land rather than being identified with and defined in terms of locality. It was becoming equally clear that the poor were potential labor and that, just as property owners had a duty to use their land resources productively, so government should ensure that this labor resource was prepared and able to be employed productively.

Sir William Coventry, somewhere round 1670, put it most clearly when he argued for the repeal of the Poor Laws and the development of workhouses 'where such as will not work for themselves may be compelled to work for others'.

'Public' V 'Private': Oppositional Couplets; Categories of Likeness Return to Chapter Index

...there is, at the very least, some predisposition to tie up past with bad (in one word: backward), and future with good (progressive). (Gellner 1978, p. 3)

Appleby has summed up the new mood well:

The emancipation of property owners from most forms of political control over the use of their land and money had shifted the source of economic planning from regulations shaped by the past to private decisions oriented toward the future.

Where earlier the disposal of a harvest or the pursuit of a trade had been conditional upon the likely social impact, the acceptance of near-absolute property rights had driven a wedge between society and the economy.

With the curtailment of political oversight over economic life, the formal link between the material resources of the country and the people to be sustained by them had been cut. The commonwealth had become an aggregation of private wealth.
(Appleby 1978, p. 151)

In western Europe, decentralization of political authority, reassertion of individual rights and responsibilities, and demand for deregulation of economic activity became interfused. These became increasingly seen in terms of oppositional couplets:

  • Government versus People;
  • Public versus Private;
  • Political versus Economic;
  • Regulation versus Enterprise;
  • Tradition versus Progress.

And, as perceptions matured, demands for clear separation between the social expressions of those oppositions became more forceful.

This separation was not simply a matter of recognizing and spelling out social oppositions. Not only were there oppositional pairs, there were also conceptual categories of likeness:

  • Government
  • Public
  • Political
  • Regulation
  • Tradition

-AND-
  • People
  • Private
  • Economic
  • Enterprise
  • Progress

It became difficult to assert the need for the clear separation of one oppositional pair without, by implication, asserting the need for the rest.

Entrepreneurs became religiously and socially respectable. But they did not, for these reasons, become any less earthly-minded. It was their individualistic pragmatism which had brought them into alignment with religious protest groups. Each party in the alignment simply assumed their own orientation in those with whom they associated.

They should Become "Habituated to Labor and Fatigue" Return to Chapter Index

The consequences of this new-found respectability and assumption of religious morality were not to the advantage of less fortunate members of society. Yet, as Wilson argues in focusing on the 18thcentury poor law,

The social legislators of the Restoration aimed at nothing less than making the poor a source of profit to the state by forcing them to work for reduced wages [but]

...what came to be regarded by later critics as a system of calculated brutality and repression arose in the first place not from unconcern or harshness, but out of a desire to protect the efforts of those local authorities who were trying hardest to improvise remedies.
(Wilson 1969, pp. 119, 134)

As property owners and their allies took control of government, they became increasingly insistent that the 'natural laws' which underwrote their activities should be applied to all people. So important did it appear to be to ensure that the poor became involved in productive activity that otherwise moral and upright people could entertain extreme measures to ensure that this happened.

A major problem among the poor was that there appeared little desire on their part to increase their material possessions or to indulge in work for work's sake. There was therefore little incentive to engage in continued labor beyond that which was required to supply their perceived needs 101. This attitude made labor inefficient and the laboring poor unreliable workers. They needed external stimulus to labor. In 1700, in setting out labor laws for the Crawley Iron Works, Crawley spells out his problem:

Some have pretended a sort of right to loyter, thinking by their readiness and ability to do sufficient in less time than others. Others have been so foolish to think bare attendance without being imployed in business is sufficient ... Others so impudent as to glory in their villany and upbrade others for their diligence.
(quoted in Thompson 1967, p. 81)

The poor felt that they were being employed for a particular set of tasks. Crawley felt that he had hired their potential to labor, and that they should 'put in a good day's work'. His solution was to provide external checks on the punctuality and performance of laborers:

Every morning at 5 a clock the Warden is to ring the bell for the beginning to work, at eight a clock for breakfast, at half an hour after for work again, at twelve a clock for dinner, at one to work and at eight to ring for leaving work and all to be lock'd up.
(quoted in Thompson 1967, p. 82)

Since there was no internalized discipline in these laborers, they had to be regimented and checked by those who could supply such discipline.

Over succeeding decades this problem of ensuring greater reliability and effort from the laboring poor was a perennial concern of those who wanted to harness the productive possibilities of the century. In order to ensure consistency, those in charge seemed to need to be constantly vigilant against a population apparently determined to impair their constitutions by laziness and dull their spirits by indolence (Thompson 1967, p.83).

Employers were looking for ways in which consistent effort could be guaranteed. One of the best seemed, initially, to compel laborers to conform to clock time. Factories had clocks built into their facades, which chimed the time so that laborers would know when to start work.

Schooling was quickly seen as one of the prime means by which people could be taught the importance of punctuality and sustained labor so that,

by the time the child reached six or seven it should become "habituated, not to say naturalized to labor and fatigue".
(Thompson 1965, p. 84)

Inevitably, over time, less scrupulous employers started to manipulate their clocks, starting early and finishing late by altering the time shown:

... in reality there were no regular hours; masters and managers did with us as they like. The clocks at the factories were often put forward in the morning and back at night, and instead of being instruments for the measurement of time, they were used as cloaks for cheatery and oppression.
(quoted in Thompson 1965, p. 86)

This practice, far from undermining people's reliance on measured time, made people increasingly conscious of 'correct' clock time, of working 'to the clock'.

However, all the measures adopted during the 18th century to retrain people to 'use their time productively' were of mixed success, and on into the 19th century employers and reformers continued to lament the indolence of the laboring poor 102.

In the second half of the 18th century, Townsend provided one of the more extreme solutions to the problem of compelling people to diligent work, which was to be taken up in the early 19th century:

...hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but, as the most natural motive to industry and labor, it calls forth the most powerful exertions; and, when satisfied by the free bounty of another, lays a lasting and sure foundation for good will and gratitude ...
(œJoseph Townsend 1786 )

To the bridle of time discipline was to be added the spur of necessity. If people's needs could be kept at a high level, then their efforts to supply their needs would ensure consistent long-term 'habits of industry'. The silent, unremitting pressure of a constant threat of starvation, which could only be countered by engaging in wage labor, could be relied on to channel people into 'adopting those habits of industry, which always tend to steadiness and sobriety of conduct, and to consequent material wealth and prosperity' (Codere 1950, p. 24).

These means were to be reinforced by developing education for the poor. From John Bellers who, in 1696, suggested the establishment of 'colleges of industry' in which the 'involuntary leisure of the poor could be turned to good account' (quoted in Polanyi 1957, p. 105), to increasingly frequent attempts at the social education of the poor during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It became a recognized social responsibility of mature people to re-educate the morally suspect poor and to ensure, in the meantime, that they were gainfully employed.

By the middle of the 18th century, the primary ideological assumptions of modernity had become well established. Now, it seemed, to most well-educated, well-enculturated western Europeans that people were (or should be) undeniably separate, private, self-developing, acquisitive individuals whose moral and social worth could be calculated by observing the extent and nature of their private property.

It seemed equally certain that economic enterprise should be undertaken by private individuals and corporations, not by the state, but that the state had responsibility to ensure that the workforce was properly trained and that those who would not work were put to work.

Perhaps the most successful of the 18th century social philosophers was Adam Smith 103 - not because he had anything particularly new or revolutionary to say - but precisely because what he had to say expressed the emerging primary ideological assumptions of western European industrialism when increasing numbers of British people were already organizing their lives and thinking in terms of them.

He made explicit, in an organized form, what people already unconsciously 'knew'. And, of course, he is recognized as the father of economics. He also, in a way which may now be difficult to understand if one reads his writings, became an immensely popular author. His work, particularly The Wealth of Nations (Smith 1974), which was first published in 1776, became the topic of drawing room discussion. People easily identified with his description of how the world was, or should be, organized, but that description was novel in the literature of the time.

Western Europeans did not become economically oriented because Adam Smith provided a systematized account of rational economic behavior. Those in control were already economically oriented. Adam Smith systematically described what was happening around him. The primary assumptions of those in control in the mid-18th century already assumed the existence of independent, self-interested, competitive, acquisitive, rational beings, focused on life within an economic environment.

Adam Smith made the inevitable, moral, by spelling out the system of laws which underwrote economic behavior. Since economic behavior was governed by rational conformity to natural laws it could scarcely be otherwise than morally acceptable.

By the late 18th century, at the outset of what we now refer to as the industrial revolution, prosperous western Europeans knew that life should be lived in an economic environment, that they were private, self-promoting individuals whose lives were oriented to use of the material world, with the correct forms of relationship and organization spelt out in the 'economy'.

Moral people worked hard. The evidence of their morality was their increasing prosperity. Their increasing prosperity could best be demonstrated by increased accumulation of possessions and by increased consumption. The ways in which they should engage in economic activity were all spelt out by the 'principles' through which they could guarantee both individual prosperity and the wealth of the nation. Those principles had been distilled through five hundred years of history.

Moral western Europeans 'knew' that there were natural laws, and that, whether they had been established by God or not, conformity to them would lead to a better world. On the other hand, failure to live by them would bring chaos and poverty. Western Europeans had a moral duty to transform the world by reorganizing it to conform to the rules and regulations which guaranteed successful economic endeavor and burgeoning material prosperity.

Conclusion Return to Chapter Index

The past two hundred years have seen the primary ideological presumptions of Western Europe become those of more and more of her people, whether in Europe or in colonized lands. And, as Western Europeans have become increasingly convinced that these presumptions are features of the real world, they have increasingly devoted their time to defining and particularizing the rules and principles of economic activity and organization.

The past fifty have been years in which Western 'experts' have increasingly insisted on reorganizing the rest of the world to engage in 'correct' economic activity and organization. This reorganization requires:

One of the continuing problems for Western Europeans, who are as convinced of the need to transform the world as their forebears were, is that so little of the economic activity in Third World countries conforms to the prescriptions of formal economics. People seem, all too easily, to engage in forms of activity and develop forms of organization which are clearly 'informal' and 'illegitimate'.

As was said at the start of this discussion, the primary ideological assumptions of any community change through time. They both reflect experiences of the past and modify those of the future. The primary ideological assumptions of Western Europeans have given birth to a number of competing secondary ideologies, and to a felt compulsion on the part of Europeans to refashion the rest of the world to participate in 'economic development'.

Both the Western assumption of the independent existence of an 'economic environment' and the equally accepted belief that there is an objective set of laws governing behavior in that environment come from, and reflect, the particular historical experiences of Western Europeans over a thousand years.

Every community has such a history, whether written or not. And all communities think and act on the basis of primary ideological presumptions which stem from their own unique history. It is as difficult to change the forms of organization and behavior of other communities which are based on their primary ideological assumptions as it would be for Western Europeans to live their lives in terms of the understandings of another society.

To the extent that Western 'experts' demand that other communities deny those basic features of their world which they 'know' to be true, and that they, instead, live by Western presumptions, they bring confusion and disorientation to individual lives and to communities. If these communities need to 'develop', that development must be on their own terms, based upon their own primary assumptions and filtered through their own secondary ideologies. Otherwise, advisers bring not 'development' but confusion to the lives of other people.

If there are increasing numbers of people who are becoming marginalized in non-Western communities, they are being marginalized by forms of organization, interaction and understanding which come from Western Europe's historical experiences. Only by allowing them to reorganize the world from their own perspectives can that marginalization be countered. Then, of course, Western Europeans will find themselves marginalized, unable to come to grips with the forms of organization and interaction which they experience when living in those communities.

If other communities, organizing life in terms of their own primary assumptions, become industrially organized, it may well be that some will prove to be better at the game of competitive profit making than the West. But the West is likely to find it difficult to understand what gives them their edge 104. They are also likely to argue that the competitive advantage of those communities comes from their engaging in illegitimate forms of economic organization and activity.

End of Chapter

Chapter 4:
How Born Again Christians Rescued Capitalism Return to Index of Chapters

...they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. ...man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor. (Thomas Jefferson, 1787) 105

The 18th century saw the crystallization of what, in later centuries, would be considered 'modern' forms of understanding and action 106. This was the century of 'the enlightenment':

This was the century in Western European history when the turmoil of previous centuries had distilled into a new version of 'objective reality' for those who held the reins of power. It was the century in which they would take responsibility for transforming the rest of the world to live by the reality they now lived in - starting with their own, home grown 'savages'. It was also the century in which the justification for natural laws shifted from divine decree to the innate characteristics of environments in a self-existent natural world 109.

In social thought, independent, autonomous individuals became the 'atoms' of human interaction and society. As Louis Dumont put it,

the hierarchical Christian Commonwealth was atomised at two levels: it was replaced by a number of individual states, themselves made up of individual men.
(1965, pp. 30)

The material realm, also, would be found to be comprised of independent 'atoms' - the building blocks of a new reality resulting from the new understanding of the world. And a new 'environment' would be conceived, to contain and explain the newly apprehended natural laws found to be driving human ambition and the wealth of nations.

In Search of the 'Greatest Good' - The Summum Bonum Return to Chapter Index

All the presumptions of the past concerning the nature and purpose of natural laws remained intact. It seemed absurd to question the Summum Bonum consequences of employing them in furthering human control of the material world 110. By conforming to and employing the principles being uncovered in daily life, human beings could look forward to living in the best of all possible worlds.

Immanuel Kant would explain this at the end of the century,

The realization of the Summum Bonum in the world is the necessary object of a will determinable by the moral law. But in this will the perfect accordance of the mind with the moral law is the supreme condition of the Summum Bonum.
(1788 Bk 2, Ch. 2, pt. 4)

For increasing numbers of the 'middle sorts' in the 18th century, individuals were self-existent, self-developing beings. The presumption of previous centuries, that "the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part" (Aristotle, Politics Bk 1, Part 2) 111 now seemed under attack.

To the intellectual protagonists of the century, the controversy between atomism (human beings can be thinking, rational beings independently of social relations) and holism (social relations are essential to human beings insofar as they are thinking, rational entities) was a real one, perceived as a confrontation between materialism and spirituality, between atheism and godliness. It was, however, the logical outcome of Aquinas's model in an age when life within this world became the dominant focus, with religion secondary in importance to material prosperity for those who held the reins of power.

Now, one did not start from a presumption of perfect wholes and distill the laws which enabled them and determined the nature of their parts. One started with the 'atoms' from which the wholes were extrapolated and determined the innate characteristics of those atoms. One then extrapolated from that information to ways in which the atoms could best be 'developed' and combined to yield their potential 112 .

For those 'on the side of God', human beings reaped the rewards of their morality. And that morality was summed up in obedience to the 'will of God' spelt out in the natural laws he had established to ensure the perfection of the natural world.

For those 'on the side of nature', human beings exercised their innate talents, pursued their own 'natural' interests, and reaped the rewards of successfully doing so. Conformity to the 'real' nature of human beings, it was assumed, must necessarily result in the Summum Bonum.

It is this implicit presumption of collective good being a necessary outcome of individual self-interest 113 which is the inconsistent heart of utilitarian philosophies of the period and of the gamut of utilitarian and economic models which have flowed from them.

œBernard Mandeville's acerbic verse on the ways in which the private vices of the bees of a hive produced prosperity for the whole, set the scene for confrontation between the two perspectives,

... every Part was full of Vice,
Yet the whole Mass a Paradice;
Flatter'd in Peace, and fear'd in Wars
They were th'Esteem of Foreigners,
And lavish of their Wealth and Lives,
The Ballance of all other Hives.

Such were the Blessings of that State;
Their Crimes conspired to make 'em Great;
And Vertue, who from Politicks
Had learn'd a Thousand cunning Tricks,
Was, by their happy Influence,
Made Friends with Vice: And ever since
The worst of all the Multitude
Did something for the common Good.
(1705, lines 155-168)

By the 1720s Mandeville's verses, together with a range of similar writings, were provoking a storm of protest from those who knew that the material gains of prudence and industry came not from self-interested greed but from correct application of and adherence to the laws of God which underwrote the natural world.

It seemed that the very basis for morality was being undermined. If Mandeville's assertions were right, then morality was a chain about the neck of society, and immorality was virtue well disguised. The fundamental principles underpinning the natural rights of human beings seemed to be under challenge as these thinkers pointed to greed and self-interest as the fundamental motivational factors leading to material success and the consequent Summum Bonum.

By the 18th century, there were a number of fundamental presumptions which 'responsible' western Europeans subconsciously employed in 'making sense' of their world 114 :

The Economy : a new 'Environment' Return to Chapter Index

The search for natural laws, and determination to live by them, had been a preoccupation of western Europeans over several centuries. That search focused on phenomena which were identified as belonging within recognized 'environments' of the natural world. Sets of natural laws were derived from and legitimate within the domains within which they had been distilled.

By the 18th century, a number of distinct environments had been identified in the non-human material realm 117. However, in the realm of human existence in the natural world, no distinct environments had been identified. All human activity was considered contained within the 'social' domain, interconnected and subject to the same set of 'moral' laws.

At the start of the 18th century, the money-makers moved to center stage. Their behaviors became accepted as important to the well-being of all members of society and the nature of their activities became the focus of serious deliberation. Mandeville's observations might have been delivered with sardonic humor, but he meant what he said.

Natural laws were not merely important in explaining the operation of the natural world, they also justified what they explained. They provided legitimate, indeed, necessary means for successfully manipulating (for the common good) those areas of the natural world which western Europeans recognized as having objective existence. Now, however, it seemed as though the area of natural law which applied to human behavior was flawed. How could it be that the self-interested 'unsocial' behavior of those engaged in trade could contribute to the Summum Bonum ?

Attempts to explain this, were to produce recognition of the first social 'environment', anticipated in the 17th, but formally outlined in the 18th century - The Economy. Since its 'discovery', this new environment, through the laws and associated structures formulated and reformulated within it, has increasingly dominated and controlled life in Western European communities.

In the first half of the 18th century, the money-makers of Europe were in relatively secure political control. Their activities were accepted as fundamental to social and individual wellbeing by those who now dominated political life in Britain and Western Europe.

However, it became increasingly obvious that there were certain fundamental human behaviors which seemed to underwrite economic success, which were not in harmony with the moral laws which western European jurists had identified and spelt out in the 17th century 118. These behaviors had not been incorporated within the moral law structures developed in the 17th century and seemed, once they were identified, to challenge and often invalidate them.

Bernard Mandeville (1718) directly focused on this problem in his Fable of the Bees. As Harold Cook explained,

The book seemed to argue that what most people recognized as human vices were the main engines of the collective good.

Mandeville's critics,

correctly detected a view of reason that made it largely into a device for calculating ends rather than for developing inner moral wisdom. The essay began with a meditation on whether people really did act out of charity, defined as

that sincere Love we have for our selves ... transferr'd pure and unmix'd to others, not tied to us by Bonds of Friendship or Consanguinity.

Acts on behalf of friends and family, or to gain honor and public respect, were not counted as truly charitable by this definition. Nor were any actions arising from the passions of pity or compassion, which make us feel better when we indulge them.

Pride and Vanity have built more Hospitals than all the Virtues together,

Mandeville declared, referring sarcastically to the recent munificent gifts in the will of Dr. John Radcliffe.

Mandeville went on to declare that

Charity, where it is too extensive, seldom fails of promoting Sloth and Idleness, and is good for little in the Commonwealth but to breed Drones and destroy Industry.

He urged that while the helpless needed relief, most seeking charity should be put to work.
(1999, pp. 101, 104)

For the next fifty years controversy was to rage in gentry circles as to whether the recognized virtues of a social conscience did undermine sound economic management and promote sloth, or whether the apparent logic of Mandeville's assertions was nothing more than well phrased sophistry.

For those who believed that the moral virtues were primary and that life should conform to them, it was necessary to actively address the social problems of the age through education and a variety of forms of welfare. For those who saw the virtues of the age as undermining sound economic management, well-meaning people simply compounded the difficulties they sought to ameliorate. This was to be a theme which grew louder as the century passed, producing a range of policies aimed at ensuring that the gentry were freed to disciplined self-interest. 119

In the intellectual climate of the 18th century, it is scarcely surprising that someone should finally conclude that such behavior related to a particular realm of social life, an environment with its own internal logic and operational principles or laws. The necessary behaviors which underpinned success in this environment really did seem to conflict with the recognized moral virtues which applied to the rest of life.

Of course, if an environment was discovered, it would be found to be governed by its own set of natural laws, essential to successful endeavor in that environment, but illegitimate in other environmental contexts. Behaviors and attitudes which seemed to threaten the moral values of social and spiritual life, could be contained, insulated within the bounds of this new environment.

Appropriately, the nature of this new environment was to be distilled and explained by someone who had trained for the Anglican clergy and could be considered a morally responsible gentleman. As Adam Smith (1723-1790) explained, in a hugely popular text entitled An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), the apparent contradiction between moral virtue and the requirements of successful economic activity was due to a confusion of environments.

It could be traced to a failure to recognize that all economic activity conformed to sets of principles which were appropriate to economic behavior. There was a confusion of environments implicit in the observed contradiction.

Just as all other environments in the world were governed by natural laws which determined their characteristics, so was 'the economy' governed by a set of natural laws. These laws determined not only its characteristics, but also the kinds of behavior appropriate for individuals and groups when engaged in economic activity.

So, behavior which was highly appropriate in economic activity could still be regarded as entirely inappropriate in other spheres of life. On the other hand, to apply those values which related to non-economic activity within an economic setting would produce economic malaise.

'The economy' was a self-existent, self-sustaining environment, with its own peculiar characteristics and principles of organization and behavior. And, of course, if natural laws were found within this newly described environment, human beings had a moral responsibility to live by them. 120

The movement of the money-makers of western Europe from the demonized periphery of the 10th and 11th century medieval world 121 to the sanctified center of the new modern world was complete. They not only could be considered moral by association with religious reformers, now they were moral because of the very behaviors and attitudes in which they engaged in making money.

Indeed, a new kind of immorality was to emerge, that demonstrated by people who, when engaging in economic activity, did not conform to the necessary behaviors and attitudes and so jeopardized not only their own activity, but the activity of all those with whom they associated. What Kant was to assert concerning moral law could be asserted with equal certainty of economic law, 'the perfect accordance of the mind with the [economic] law is the supreme condition of the Summum Bonum.' As Adam Smith explained, considering the activities of merchants,

... he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, ... led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
(1776, Book 4 Ch. 2)

Here was a solution which rescued moral virtue, while establishing the appropriateness, indeed, the necessity of self-interested behavior in economic activity.

In keeping with the times, Smith claimed to have distilled the laws of economics through an examination of the actual economic behavior of people 122. In doing so he seemed to satisfy both sides of the controversy. He had distilled his laws from the 'real' world, but he had, at the same time, rescued moral virtue from the materialist assault. Both camps could accept the laws he presented without seeming to betray their own positions 123.

The capitalist could, quite reasonably, be a self-interested individual intent on his own gain on Friday and a public spirited philanthropist on Sunday (or even at the same time in different contexts!) and remain a truly moral, consistent person throughout.

Inevitably, Adam Smith became the 'father of economics', the person who first spelt out the natural laws which underwrote economic organization and activity. At the same time, his writing reaffirmed, for Western European 'responsible' people, the correctness of both their understandings of the world and their preoccupation with economic activity.

Of course, when one distills the fundamental attributes of human beings from the current behaviors of oneself and one's compatriots, inevitably, those behaviors which stem from the primary ideological presumptions of one's own community become accepted as the fundamental attributes of all people.

Adam Smith did for economics what Pound (1921) claimed Grotius did for the "natural rights" of human beings 124. Just as the common law rights of the English became the natural rights of all people in the 17th century, so the economic predilections of 18th century British gentry became the instinctive behaviors and economic motivations of human beings 125.

From that time to the present, western Europeans, whether in their homelands or in their colonized worlds, have assiduously applied themselves to refining and expanding the 'natural laws' which underwrite economic activity and organization. Of course, the task is not yet, and never will be, complete. As we've already seen, the primary ideological presumptions upon which human understanding is founded are in long-term flux through a Heraclitean126 dialectical interaction with the environments which human beings define and within which they live.

Over the last two hundred years western Europeans have attempted to reach a consistent and coherent explanation of the positive consequences of the exercise of both economic self-interest and moral virtue.

If this could be shown then, indeed, economic activity would receive its final validation 127 .

It was, perhaps, inevitable, that it would be the foremost Western European philosophical thinker of the late 18th century who would first convincingly draw the threads together. John Locke's philosophical validation and justification of modern primary ideological presumptions had established the early credentials of modern business 128. Immanuel Kant, a century later, would explain why the apparently contradictory sets of economic and moral laws were both essential in reaching toward the Summum Bonum.

There is an innate antagonism between opposed human capacities which is mediated in human nature. Through a dialectical tension, or 'antagonism', between self-interest and sociability, all the finest qualities of human society and achievement are generated.

By antagonism, I here mean the unsocial sociability of mankind - that is, the combination in them of an impulse to enter into society, with a thorough spirit of opposition which constantly threatens to break up this society.

The ground of this lies in human nature. Man has an inclination to enter into society, because in that state he feels that he becomes more a man, or, in other words, that his natural faculties develop. But he has also a great tendency to isolate himself, because he is, at the same time, aware of the unsocial peculiarity of desiring to have everything his own way; and thus, being conscious of an inclination to oppose others, he is naturally led to expect opposition from them...

All the culture and art which adorn humanity, the most refined social order, are produced by that unsociability which is compelled by its own existence to discipline itself, and so by enforced art to bring the seeds implanted by Nature into full flower.
(Kant 1784 p. 147)

Human beings are 'compelled' by their unsociability to discipline themselves and from that discipline flow the enhancements and benefits of 'all the culture and art which adorn humanity'. The corollary, of course, is that lack of self-discipline threatens the 'refined social order'.

Human beings who wished 'to bring the seeds implanted by Nature into full flower' had a responsibility not only to be self-disciplined, but also to discipline those who seemed unable or unwilling to discipline themselves. Stifle that urge to unsociability, and one stifles human progress. At the heart of human progress lies disciplined independent individualism. The manure of competitive self-interest grows beautiful flowers! 129

By the middle of the 19th century Kant's explanation had grown into a belief 130 in the innate propensity of human beings, allowed to indulge in unfettered self-interest and self-promotion, to produce the common good. The moral virtues of an earlier age were to be displaced, for many western Europeans, by a belief that all things work together for good - provided self-disciplined individuals are freed to pursue their own self-interested ends.

Life was to be considered an evolutionary adaptation of individuals to their environments. Provided it was not distorted and choked by government regulation and direction, this would result in the best possible adaptation of not only individuals but of human societies to their environments 131.

The Need to separate Government and Commerce Return to Chapter Index

Increasingly, as the 19th century unfolded, it was to be argued that social and political controls, regulations, and 'interference' in individual lives produced only social ill. The only role for government was that of ensuring that no-one and nothing interfered with the right of each self-disciplined individual to pursue his or her own self-interest uninhibited by social and political rules and regulations. The role of government would become seen as that of a 'watchdog' of private liberty and a stern school-master to those who threatened disciplined self-interest.

For those who took the new doctrine to extreme, and there were many very influential people in this camp by the latter half of the 19th century, governments should not get involved in trying to 'improve' society. Such attempts were doomed to long-term failure. The role of the state was the protection of those who, through their disciplined self-interest, had acquired the wealth which was its sure reward 132. The 'free market' would sort out everything else!

Thomas Huxley (1871) described the position of those who opposed legislative attempts at improving the lot of the poor in the second-half of the 19th century:

... the Education Act is only one of a number of pieces of legislation to which they object on principle;

and they include under like condemnation:

According to their views, not a shilling of public money must be bestowed upon a public park or pleasure ground;

not sixpence upon the relief of starvation, or the cure of disease.

Those who hold these views support them by two lines of argument.

They enforce them deductively by arguing from an assumed axiom, that the State has no right to do anything but protect its subjects from aggression. ...

These views are supported a posteriori, by an induction from observation, which professes to show that whatever is done by a Government beyond these negative limits, is not only sure to be done badly, but to be done much worse than private enterprise would have done the same thing.
(œAdministrative Nihilism (1871) in Collected Essays, 1893, p. 258-9) 133

In order to understand how these views could become so dominant one needs to understand the social and political tensions of the preceding century. The 18th century saw the flowering of the assertion of near-absolute property rights and the private aggregation of wealth, which had matured in the previous century. Self-interested pursuit of wealth and accumulation of property had become socially approved.

Over the next 150 years, the gentry pursued their own interests at the expense of all those who lacked the political or economic power to resist them. They dispossessed most of the small holders of Britain and completed the alienation of the commons 134 from those who had for centuries relied on access to it for survival.

In the process, millions lost access to rural resources and were forced into relying on parish welfare support 135. Then, because the burden became too great for the parishes to sustain in the long-term, the dispossessed were compelled to move to the emerging industrial towns of Britain. As the process compounded the problems of the poor, many were compelled to move to the 'New Found' lands which were rapidly becoming a destination for people who felt or found themselves disenfranchised by developments in the 'Home Country' 136.

By the start of the 18th century, Britain, with most of the rest of western Europe to one extent or another, had in place all the necessary primary ideological understandings, motivations and organizational processes and practices which would produce both the discipline of economics and the 'industrial revolution'. What it lacked, was a deep religious commitment to capitalism.

The 'middle sorts' now thought and organized life as capitalists. However, their earthly-minded materialism, self-satisfied complacency and self-interested stripping of the livelihoods and entitlements from more than half the population could very easily have produced not an industrial revolution but a 'revolution of the proletariat'. Without the continued religious dedication and commitment to 17th century morality of a small minority of the gentry, the self-interested greed of the 'middle sorts' in the early 18th century might well have reduced capitalism to a footnote in European history.

A Deeply Religious Capitalist Revival Return to Chapter Index

(18/03/16)

But for the peculiar consequences of the dispossession of small landholders and the consequent undermining of small business through much of Britain, capitalism might well have faltered in the 18th century, another 'blind alley' of history 137. Those who held the purse-strings of Britain, in their self-interested drive to accumulate property and wealth, not only dispossessed 'the poor', they threatened the livelihoods and wellbeing of less affluent members of the middle ranks. Less wealthy households and individuals, who held to the same understandings and were motivated by much the same impulses as the financiers, stock-holders and large property owners, were being threatened by their activities with both social ruin and material destitution. 138

These 'little-gentry' found themselves victims of policies and practices geared to enhancing the wealth and increasing the property of those with political clout. And, as they either lost their livelihoods or became fearfully aware of the possibility of becoming destitute, they found themselves being treated as though they were members of those 'lower ranks' who 'ought' to be subjected to the disciplines of the century.139

It would be easy to see battle lines drawn in 18th century Western Europe between the reforming 'middle ranks' and the oppressed 'lower ranks' of the century. But this would be a distortion of reality. Those consigned to the lower ranks of society had lived through the same centuries as the middle rank reformers. The growing influence and authority of the money makers of western Europe had not left them untouched.

While the broad rankings of society included the aristocracy, gentry and 'the poor', there were, between each ranking, large numbers of people who did not quite fit the stereotypes of the age:

The 'almost gentry' and those who identified with them as employees and neighbors - in England, who had fought with the forces of Oliver Cromwell - very often held the opinions of the gentry toward the 'idle poor' as strongly, or more strongly than those whose lifestyles seldom brought them into direct contact with such people. They had long ceased to consider themselves members of 'the poor'. They were, in their own minds, closely allied with the gentry and, through their networks of associates and friends this perception was continuously reinforced.

As is all-too-often true in such situations, those who subconsciously sensed that they could easily be lumped together with people they considered hierarchically inferior to themselves, strongly emphasized the differences, emphasizing the negative stereotypes of those from whom they wished to be separated 140.

The 'little gentry' of the 18th century were strong in their denunciations of people who seemed to expect the parish to support them. Why should the parishes, and therefore, people who provided the parishes with their income, support the lazy poor who were, in growing numbers, relying on parish support for their subsistence?

Paradoxically, as these people found their own livelihoods under threat they more strongly resented the costs of supporting the indigent. They were not presuming that some day they also might need parish help - the specter of being forced into the ranks of the poor was, for these people, one they could scarcely contemplate. Rather, their own difficulties were best addressed through minimizing the demands of the parish on their own incomes.

As the reformers set about rationalizing land ownership and use, these people found themselves caught up in the consequences of the policies. Rural laborers and small holders were dispossessed and driven from the land and the infrastructural supports sustained by them collapsed.

As is true in the present in countries all around the world, as rural communities disintegrated, both those directly affected by the reformist policies of the century and all those who depended on them for their subsistence, found their livelihoods collapsing and found themselves no longer able to subsist in the countryside. As they lost their means of livelihood they found themselves defined with the poor by the authorities, rather than recognized as members of a disenfranchised 'lower middle' ranking in society. Toynbee (1884) described it all:

at the conclusion of the 17th century it was estimated by Gregory King that there were 180,000 freeholders in England,... less than a hundred years later, the pamphleteers of the time, and even careful writers like Arthur Young, speak of the small freeholders as practically gone...

'The able and substantial freeholders,' described by Whitelock, 'the freeholders and freeholders' sons, well armed within with the satisfaction of their own good consciences, and without by iron arms, who stood firmly and charged desperately,' - this devoted class, who had broken the power of the king and the squires in the Civil Wars, were themselves, within a hundred years from that time, being broken, dispersed, and driven off the land.

The 18th century was a century of wealth and well-being for the middle and upper ranks of society but, as Toynbee (1884) says, in the midst of all the wealth and prosperity which began in the 18th century, there were vast numbers of destitute people. The later 18th and 19th centuries were to demonstrate that unfettered competitive self-interest does not necessarily produce the Summum Bonum 141.

Wendeborn, a German living in England during the second half of the 18th century described what he saw,

In no other country are more poor to be seen than in England, and in no city a greater number of beggars than in London. A foreigner who hears of many millions annually raised for the benefit of the poor... will find himself unable to explain how it happens, that in his walk he is, almost every hundred yards, disturbed by the lamentations of unfortunate persons who demand his charity.
(quoted in Simon 1908 p.60)

As the 18th century unfolded, those people in the lower-middle ranks of British communities 142 looked for support and help from those whom they had long considered their superiors and community leaders. All-too-often, they found not only no support, but an active rejection of them and the difficulties they faced. They seemed to have been condemned by those they sought to emulate to a life of fear and possible destitution.

These 'almost poor', 'almost middle ranking' people knew that their only hope of avoiding the destitution which was all around them lay in being accepted, and so being supported by the middle ranks who seemed to be escaping the worst consequences of the reforms of the era. They both deeply wanted to be accepted by them and, at the same time, felt a deep need to be identified as not belonging to the pernicious ranks of the slothful.

They were not vagabonds and wastrels. They took life seriously and wanted nothing more than to be recognized as morally upright, desirous of owning and conserving property and willing to engage in work to that end. They had already adopted, or were more than willing, if they could find employment, to adopt "those habits of industry, which always tend to steadiness and sobriety of conduct, and to consequent material wealth and prosperity" (Codere 1950, p. 24).

They found the means of achieving both of these heartfelt longings in the religious revivals which swept Britain and the American colonies (soon to become the United States) through the 18th and on into the 19th century. The religious revivals were to provide a means for lower-middle ranking people to demonstrate and reaffirm their respectability.

Nothing reduces human beings to greater despair and distress than threat of the imminent loss of not only the means of livelihood but of self-esteem and status. The lower middle ranks of the 18th century found themselves facing possible destitution and treatment as though they belonged with those who, as Joseph Townsend (1786) described them later in the century, had

by their improvidence, by their prodigality... drunkenness and vices, ... dissipated all their substance... by their debaucheries... ruined their constitutions, and reduced themselves to such a deplorable condition that they have neither inclination nor ability to work. 143

There seemed no way out, no way in which they could reassert their status and respectability and demonstrate their commitment to industry and to all the associated 'middle sort' moral virtues of the century.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, they were thrown a lifeline. Preachers, clearly members of the gentry, began travelling the country, offering them acceptance, legitimacy, and the possibility of banding together into societies of disciplined, industrious, moral people. They flocked to hear them and to commit their lives to their causes in the hundreds of thousands. At meeting after meeting, they expressed their heartfelt relief at the possibility of redemption, of committing themselves, unreservedly, to a life of industry and frugality, of religious and moral discipline and virtue 144.

Born-Again to Industry: the Conversion of the Little Gentry Return to Chapter Index

The preachers were bemused both by their own success in attracting such crowds to hear them speak, and by the depth of the emotional response to their message. Time and again, to messages as prosaic as many of the œsermons of John Wesley, people lost emotional control, falling to the ground, crying uncontrollably, losing control of their faculties. And the fervor with which they sang the songs of the revival was a testimony to the depth of their despair and their revived hope for the future.

In the early to mid 18th century the middle ranks increasingly confused money-making and religious ideals. More and more of them justified themselves through involvement in money-making activities and the churches, which had been so strong in the 17th century, found it difficult to attract and hold members 145.

At the same time, the minority who took their religion seriously felt increasingly ill at ease with the worldliness and materialism of the age and felt themselves burdened with a responsibility of their own to maintain their spiritual focus. John Wesley, as a young man in 1734, expressed it well in writing to his father,

I take religion to be, not the bare saying of so many prayers, morning and evening, in public or in private; nor anything superadded now and then to a careless or worldly life; but a constant ruling habit of the soul; a renewal of our minds in the image of God; a recovery of the Divine likeness; a still increasing conformity of heart and life to the pattern of our most Holy Redeemer.
(quoted in Harrison, 1942, p. 17)

Through the 18th century, in the face of what such people saw as a constantly increasing hedonistic materialism among the affluent middle ranks, they held to their faith and brought it to those who were prepared to listen. But, of course, they carried within them the understandings of their time and of their social ranking.

As historians have stressed over the years 146, the religious revivals of the 18th century were conservative, not radical in orientation. The disciplines imposed on and accepted by the converts have been viewed as repressive and restrictive. Yet, as we will see, these were the very features which resulted in its enormous influence over the subsequent three hundred years in, first, English speaking countries and communities, and then, through the subsequent efflorescence of capitalism, in much of the rest of western Europe.

It was one of the early concerns of the Wesley brothers and other members of the 'Holy Club' at Oxford (from which many of the preachers came) that they too easily succumbed to laziness, a great 'weakness of the flesh', when God wanted them to 'employ their time profitably'. Industry and frugality, as John Wesley was to repeat time and again, are the inevitable outcomes of true godliness.

The following advice to his followers, in a tract published in 1762, providing instructions for daily living to those who belonged to Methodist Societies, is typical of his views on the subject,

Be active. Give no place to indolence or sloth; give no occasion to say, 'Ye are idle, ye are idle.' Many will say so still; but let your whole spirit and behavior refute the slander. Be always employed; lose no shred of time; gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost. And whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. 147

If human beings found themselves destitute, if they felt that God had abandoned them, they had only to commit their lives to Him and live as He had intended them to live. This would inevitably result in God's blessing. The demonstration of one's commitment to God was the diligence with which one applied oneself to 'one's calling'. If one was called to preach, then preach one must. If one was called to ply one's trade, then ply one's trade 'as unto God'. As Wesley put it, "Religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches." (quoted in Thompson 1980, p. 391)

In the 18th century, for both the religiously committed and for the majority of more loosely religious people of the middle ranks, progress was closely tied to God's plan for the world. Those who lived by his precepts, through their commitment and dedication, would ensure that the future would be that which He had planned. To show weakness in the face of unrepentant immorality was to endorse such behavior. One rejoiced 'with the Angels at one sinner brought to repentance', but one thundered the wrath of God to those who willfully refused His grace.

The century saw many very successful evangelists carrying this message to the 'lost'. It was, however, John Wesley, a man who knew that God had a plan for the world and that His plan could only be worked out through people who dedicated themselves to ensuring it, who was to fashion the doctrinal base for evangelical Protestantism over the next two hundred years. He was, in their hundreds of thousands, to 'convert' the deeply threatened lower-middle ranks to 'Methodism' 148. In doing so, he was also to set the scene for the 'Victorian morality' of the next century.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, emphasis on the freedom of the individual from domination by both political and religious bureaucracies had led, in some instances, to anarchy, to an anti-law (antinomian) view of the rights of the individual. Since the individual was saved by grace, any attempt to merit God's favor through 'works' countered the grace of God. So, it was, in the most extreme forms of antinomianism, argued that the individual could display the depth of the grace of God through ignoring or contravening both moral and social rules and regulations.

In reaction to this, Luther, Calvin and other protest leaders of the 16th century emphasized the importance of civil law and order, and required their followers to live closely regulated lives. Nonetheless, the evils of the centuries were commonly believed to be a consequence of this lawless strain in extreme forms of Protestantism.

By the turn of the 18th century the common teaching was that, while individuals were saved by grace through faith, this salvation was demonstrated in the life of the individual through the Christian's 'blameless' life - as Jesus had said, "By their fruit you will recognize them" (Matthew Ch. 7 Verse 16). Wesley, as a consequence both of his family's experiences while growing up and of his own disputes with antinomian pietists and Calvinist dissenters, developed a theology which, while perhaps not as consistent as those of earlier protestant leaders, nonetheless directly addressed what he perceived to be fundamental weaknesses of both antinomianism and Calvinism.

Calvinists stressed the Divine prerogative in salvation. Since people were saved by grace, not works, no person could do anything to gain salvation, it was a 'free gift of God'. If people had to believe in order to be saved, they had to perform a 'work', that of actively believing. To get around this problem, Calvin had argued that God had, from the time of creation, 'elected' those to be saved. All that happened when people became religiously 'awakened' was that they became aware of what had already happened.

This awakening did not bring about their salvation, they simply became conscious of the salvation which God had accomplished 'before the foundation of the world'. Because they now knew they were among the elect, they delighted to do the will of God. Any person who was truly one of the elect, once he or she realized this, would, in thankfulness to God, want to live to please him. By their lives they would show that they really were among the elect. Of course, the flaw in this was that if people were destined to be saved, no matter what they did, then the door was always open to antinomianism.

Wesley, as a confirmed high church Anglican, was brought up in a religious environment in which faith and works went hand in hand. One showed one's faith through membership of the church, and one 'worked out one's salvation with fear and trembling'. The danger of this approach was, of course, the one which the Calvinists sought to avoid through the doctrine of election. People could be seen as 'earning' salvation through their works - the papist doctrine which Protestants claimed had brought about the Reformation in the first place.

Wesley's solution, while perhaps logically flawed, was nonetheless persuasive for ordinary people not embroiled in the intricacies of theology. First, people were saved by God's grace, through the active exercise of their free will. This was the only 'work' that any person could do to merit salvation. No form of morality, no form of legal rectitude, no membership of any religious body could bring a person to salvation. They merely exercised their 'free-will' in deciding whether or not they wanted to be saved.

When the person approached God in this way, He always accepted them. As a hymn of the period put it - "Only Believe, Only Believe, all things are possible, Only Believe". So, there were no 'elect', with the rest of humanity damned whether they liked it or not.

When people, aware of their utter helplessness and sinfulness, approached God, He gave them a 'new life', they were 'born again'. It was no longer them, but 'Christ in them'. They were given the 'Spirit of Christ' and from that point on could please God by their works, since they were not their own works, but the works of 'Christ in them, the hope of glory'. They were on the path to sanctification. Their hearts having been reoriented to God, they were being "transformed by the renewing of their minds".

As Kathryn Long has put it, speaking of attitudes reflected in the religious revivals of that century in 19th Century United States,

the stress on personal piety confirmed long-standing convictions that the only true path to social change came through individual conversions.
(1998 p. 107)

However, Wesley felt the need for some stronger reason for living lives 'acceptable to God' than an individual desire to be sanctified. Not only were people saved through an act of faith, they could also be lost through an act of will. The person who did not live to God, lived to self and, therefore, gave room to evil. This was why one had to 'work out one's salvation with fear and trembling'.

Wesley was to teach, for more than half a century, that while individuals were saved by grace through faith, and could not begin to please God until they had been 'born again', they could also commit spiritual suicide by failing to live as God intended them to. Such people had 'the form of godliness but denied the power of it'. When these people who were 'neither hot nor cold' were found within a community of Christians they should be expelled. Christians had a duty to discipline one another.

Those who were not "pressing on toward the goal" of the renewing of their minds, were 'backsliding'. And Christians could recognize such people. As Jesus had said,

By their fruit you will recognize them... Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord', will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
(Matthew 7: 16, 21)

So, one either pressed toward the goal, or one was in danger of being rejected by God - and, if by God, then also by Wesleyan Christians.

The theology might have been shaky, but the motivational message was forceful. It proved hugely successful in motivating those who accepted the message on both sides of the Atlantic over the next two hundred years.

By the end of the 18th century they would become a major religious, economic and political force within Britain and the emerging United States of America, deeply dedicated to industry and frugality, to the principle of "whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might". And it was they, not the financiers, bankers, and landowners of the country, who provided the engine for what was, indeed, to be an 'industrial revolution' which would set Britain and her transatlantic offspring on course to world empire and economic domination in the next centuries.

In a century when the moral commitment of the gentry to industry and frugality faltered, and might well have died, a new kind of 'gentleman' emerged, religiously dedicated to the unending pursuit of wealth and property, and to innovative production.

Born Again Manufacturers and Retailers Return to Chapter Index

The religious organizations which grew from the revivals or were transformed to accommodate them, provided these people with an ongoing means of deeply reaffirming the values which their 'conversions' had affirmed. Through them, they could re-establish the networks of respectability in which they had been brought up, and promote those values as essential to salvation for all human beings.

They knew that 'but for the grace of God', they too would have found themselves counted among the destitute of the century. They also quickly learned, through the preaching and teaching of the itinerant evangelists who were their leaders and mentors, that, having been saved by grace, through faith, they had begun lives of discipline and commitment to all the virtues of the century.

The Wesleyan Methodist societies, classes and bands provided the clearest model, but what John Wesley built up over more than fifty years in England was replicated with modification by many other evangelists not only in England but through Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the American colonies 149. The religious revivals of the time were, largely as a result of Wesley's vision, strongly organized, with the redeemed encouraged to long-term discipline and direction by their peers and leaders.

The deep, emotional nature of their conversion, based on a commitment to the moral values of those who brought the possibility of redemption to them, resulted in them being far more committed and determined to live by the understandings of the century than those who, till this time, had been the major promoters of modern values. By the mid 19th century, the religious revivals of Britain and the United States were overtly focused within the newly successful middle ranks of the population.

The 1858 revival in New York sprang from "a weekly prayer meeting for businessmen" (Long 1998, p. 13). Those involved in the religious 'awakenings' which recurred over more than a century on both sides of the Atlantic from the early 1730s onwards, became, over the next two centuries, the moral center, the 'moral majority' of the western communities in which they lived.

They were convinced that only through faith and reliance on 'the grace of God' had they escaped catastrophe, committed to living by both moral and economic laws and convinced, as Kant explained, that

All the culture and art which adorn humanity, the most refined social order, are produced by that unsociability which is compelled by its own existence to discipline itself, and so by enforced art to bring the seeds implanted by Nature into full flower.

When they sang "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me", they meant it with every fiber of their being.

The 18th century had launched a new, emotionally committed, community of capitalists. The driving force of the 'industrial revolution' was to come, not from the financiers and well-established gentry of the era, but from those who had been redeemed to be productive.

The term 'Methodist industrialist' was, by the early 19th century, a common descriptor for those who took both their religion and their productive enterprise seriously. They established factory towns and day schools and were concerned not only with money-making, but also with the moral development of those they employed.

Andrew Ure, in 1835, speaking of Richard Arkwright's 150 contribution to the emergence of the industrial factory explained this:

What his judgment so clearly led him to perceive, his energy of will enabled him to realize with such rapidity and success, as would have done honour to the most influential individuals, but were truly wonderful in that obscure and indigent artisan...

The main difficulty did not, to my apprehension, lie so much in the invention of a proper self-acting mechanism for drawing out and twisting cotton into a continuous thread, as in the distribution of the different members of the apparatus into one cooperative body, in impelling each organ with its appropriate delicacy and speed, and above all, in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automation.

To devise and administer a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculean enterprise, the noble achievement of Arkwright.
(The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835)

The revivals of the 18th century shared little with the cerebral, theological drive for religious reform which had brought 16th and 17th century protestant groups into being. They were 'charismatic', as that term has come to be used of similar movements in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Those who were 'saved', displayed all the passion for salvation and for recognition one might expect from people who felt themselves trapped and destined to be treated as what they were not. And they accepted and determined to live by the precepts and directives of their spiritual mentors.

Their mentors reaffirmed the presumptions of capitalism. As Whitefield, one of the very successful evangelists of the century on both sides of the Atlantic explained,

Nothing tries my temper more than to see any about me idle; an idle person tempts the devil to tempt him... if anybody says the Methodists [followers of the Wesley brothers] teach to be idle, they injure them. We tell people to be at their work early and late, that they may redeem time to attend the word. If all that speak against the Methodists were as diligent, it would be better for their wives and families. What, do you think a true Methodist will be idle?
(quoted in Armstrong 1973, p. 123)

A New Moral Leadership and Support Network Return to Chapter Index

The Methodist movement of the 18th century found its leadership, not in the dissenting churches, descendants of the puritanical, protestant movements of the 16th and 17th centuries, but in the established Church of England. And, although the hierarchy of the state church seemed reluctant to be associated with such enthusiastic Christianity, the leaders of the movement were, largely, committed to ensuring that their converts remained within the Church. So, for more than fifty years, the tightly organized and disciplined Methodist societies remained religious communities connected to the parishes of the state church.

This prolonged association did more to convince dedicated Methodists of the worldliness and lack of moral leadership in higher levels of society than almost anything else could have. Since the Anglican clergy were appointed by the Anglican hierarchy, local communities had little influence over those selected to lead them. Very often, they found themselves having to endure leadership which seemed almost inimical to the lives they had committed themselves to leading. As Archibald Harrison put it,

The Methodists themselves were increasingly reluctant to attend services conducted by clergy with no apparent interest in spiritual religion, and, too frequently, with reputations far below the standards of the gospel it was their business to proclaim.
(1942, p. 169)

They became increasingly convinced that they, themselves, would have to provide the moral leadership they sought. They could not look to their social superiors for moral direction. Rather, they could expect that those above them would, at best, display a lukewarm attitude to the moral virtues.

For these 'born again' Christians, the 'upper middle ranks', together with the aristocracy, were largely composed of people who, as Paul had explained to Timothy (2 Tim. 3:5), held "the form of religion but denied the power of it." Wesley had no hesitation in endorsing Paul's advice, "Avoid such people". He provided his own description of their shallowness, "So much paint and affectation, so many unmeaning words and senseless customs among people of rank" (quoted in Armstrong 1973, p. 88).

Those 'born again' in the 18th century revivals became the guardians of morality and prosperity. So dominant did they become that the virtues they espoused and promoted became the virtues of more than a century of middle ranking people. Even those who were, in truth, part of the earlier gentry, largely untouched by the religious revivals, found themselves having to publicly endorse the virtues. And born-again Methodists knew, with a conviction confirmed by experience, that if they did not hold the moral center, no one would.

The stern nature of the discipline they imposed on each other was tempered by social responsibility for those who repented and joined their ranks. The societies and classes of Methodism were not just religious groupings, they took moral, social and economic responsibility for each other. In doing so, they formed strong support networks, providing a social and economic refuge for people who saw the world closing in on them. As Armstrong described,

The societies helped the poor among their members - it was one of the duties of the stewards to arrange such relief. The maintenance of a 'lending stock' by the societies meant that loans of from one to five pounds could be made to poor members on the recommendation of the borrower's class leader.
(1973, p. 88)

This approach to the problems of the poor in their ranks is very similar to some of the 'pump priming' activities of 'credit banks' over the last forty years in 'developing' areas. The primary difference is that the pump priming lending of Methodist societies went to people who were already oriented to capitalist endeavor and whose activities were overseen by others of similar bent.

The lending did not produce the capitalist orientation, as some credit societies seem to presume will happen in Third World communities. Rather, it facilitated small business activity for people already aware of the need for frugal industry, the deferment of short term rewards for long term gain, and intent on the accumulation of capital as a means of demonstrating their inherent morality 151.

Methodists did not develop small scale credit societies among the unredeemed poor as a means of stimulating small business among them. They knew that money lent to such people would be spent on present needs and wants, not used to make more money.

In fact, many of those who were 'saved' from the ranks of 'the poor', failed to remain within the societies. They quickly proved themselves unreliable borrowers, who could not be trusted to use the money given them 'wisely' and, consequently, fell short of the moral requirements of the communities in which they found themselves.

The Methodists, quite unconsciously, selected people of like temper, those who were already committed to the middle ranking virtues of the century. Those whose background was among the 'poor' seldom demonstrated the long term 'habits of industry' which ensured acceptance.

Not only was this kind of support given within Methodist societies to help members out of poverty, it was also seen as a means of ensuring that they remained committed to Methodism. The networks of Methodism provided strong business support to small business people. Those who found themselves expelled from a society because they failed to measure up to the spiritual and moral requirements of the group, often found that their businesses suffered once they no longer had access to the networks through which their business activity had been established.

John Wesley, ever a practical leader, realized the power which such support had in ensuring that people remained committed to the cause, or were drawn back to commitment through being helped in this way. In a letter to the Methodist Society at Keighley, London, in 1779, he describes the financial difficulties into which a former member of the Society had fallen.

The person concerned, one William Shent, had for many years been a faithful member of the Society, but had been disciplined some time earlier and expelled for not living up to the moral requirements of membership. With support from the group removed, his business activities fell apart and he and his family were now in danger of being evicted from their home. Wesley wrote,

Who is he that is ready now to be broken up and turned into the street? William Shent. And does nobody care for this? William Shent fell into sin and was publicly expelled from the Society; but must he also starve? Must he with his grey hairs and with all his children be without a place to lay his head?...

Who is wise among you? Who is concerned for the Gospel? Who has put on the bowels of mercy? Let him arise and exert himself in this matter. You here all arise as one man and roll away the reproach. Let us set him on his feet at once. It may save both him and his family.
(Brash 1928, p. 105)

It is in this group of religiously committed capitalists that one must look to find the capitalist spirit of the 19th century, that spirit to which the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher referred when she claimed, in the late 1970s, that British people should revive the moral values of the previous century.

The superficial charge laid against 19th century middle ranking people, that their morality was largely hypocritical, only holds if one fails to recognize the large number of fellow travelers who came under the influence of Methodists and members of those dissenting Churches which were reinvigorated through participation in the 18th century religious revivals. It is a testament to the social force of the movement, that the values of those saved by grace in the 18th century, became the values of an age.

Of course, although the religious revivals of the 18th century produced a morally committed middle class of capitalists, they brought their values with them into the revival. The revival preachers and teachers of the 18th century strongly reaffirmed the important moral values of the middle ranks of western European communities. Those from the lower middle ranks, who found themselves most directly threatened by the reforms of the period, were drawn to leaders who offered them both recognition and practical support.

In a time when little distinction was being drawn between the poor and the lower middle ranks, reformers set out to teach the lower ranks the importance of work. In the process, those who were converted developed strong, religiously reinforced support networks which enabled them to succeed in business in a way that had not been possible in earlier times.

Wesley summed up the impact of Methodism on the lives of his followers in a sermon toward the end of his life,

The Methodists grow more and more self-indulgent, because they grow rich. Although many of them are still deplorably poor... yet many others, in the space of twenty, thirty or forty years, are twenty, thirty, yea, a hundred times richer than they were when they first entered the society. And it is an observation which admits of few exceptions, than nine in ten of these decreased in grace, in the same proportion as they increased in wealth. Does it not seem (and yet this cannot be) that Christianity, true scriptural Christianity, has a tendency to destroy itself?
(quoted in Armstrong 1973, p. 95)

While the Methodists took their religion seriously, all their energies were focused on life within this world. The religious virtues they promoted were capitalist virtues from the 17th century, shaped by the understandings of the 18th. They lived in an age when self-interest and the private accumulation of wealth and property were assumed to result in the Summum Bonum. As Appleby has explained,

Where earlier the disposal of a harvest or the pursuit of a trade had been conditional upon the likely social impact, the acceptance of near-absolute property rights had driven a wedge between society and the economy. With the curtailment of political oversight over economic life, the formal link between the material resources of the country and the people to be sustained by them had been cut. The commonwealth had become an aggregation of private wealth.
(Appleby 1978, p. 151)

Good Methodists knew that self-interested private enterprise, driven by a deep commitment to industry and frugality, and resulting in the private accumulation of wealth, were virtuous. As Harrison says,

The Wesleyans were particularly numerous among the shopkeepers, farmers, and better-class artisans... In some cathedral cities nearly all the shops in the High Street would be Methodist shops and a great Wesleyan congregation would gather under the very shadow of the Cathedral... In big business and in Northern factories, too, Wesleyan Methodism was prominent and grew in wealth in the prosperous years.
(1942, p. 180)

As Methodists grew wealthy they found themselves able to emulate the lifestyles and become accepted by the middle sorts with whom they had long desired to be identified. Methodism provided a moral leavening to the 19th century. In the process, the 'old money' middle ranking families took on a veneer of 'morality' which enabled the 'new money' Methodists to interact with them without seeming to betray their Methodist values. The values of the two groupings slowly merged. In business one emphasized disciplined self-interest. In social life one accepted philanthropic responsibility for the 'improvement' of the poor.

By the 19th century, Methodists and others belonging to communities which came out of the 18th century revivals were dominant in both manufacturing and retailing. Those who were the descendants of 17th and 18th century gentry very often provided the finance for the more extensive of their activities. As Andrew Ure (1835, pp. 20,1) described, while explaining the emergence of factories in the late 18th century,

In its precise acceptation, the Factory system is of recent origin, and may claim England for its birthplace. The mills for throwing silk, or making organzine, which were mounted centuries ago in several of the Italian states, and furtively transferred to this country by Sir Thomas Lombe in 1718, contained indeed certain elements of a factory, and probably suggested some hints of those grander and more complex combinations of self-acting machines, which were first embodied half a century later in our cotton manufacture by Richard Arkwright, assisted by gentlemen of Derby, well acquainted with its celebrated silk establishment.

From the outset, as Brash (1928, p. 179) says, "Methodism was an army of missionaries". Every convert was a potential evangelist, every society and class accepted an evangelical mission to 'the lost'. Those who were at the forefront of the religious revival movements in Wales, England, Ireland, Scotland and in the various American colonies, believed they had been directly chosen by God. They had His mandate to "bring sinners to repentance", and if they failed, the damnation of those they had failed to reach would be their responsibility. They knew that the warning God had given Ezekiel was theirs also,

... if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood.
(Ezekiel 33:6)

Equally, they accepted the responsibility that Wesley had made his own. They not only 'saved' the lost, they organized them into churches and communities, and they introduced the disciplines of 18th and 19th century Methodist Christianity and economic rationality to those they organized in these ways. They had the responsibility not only to bring salvation to the lost, but, in the process, to bring them civilization and consequent material prosperity.

Richard Whateley, Archbishop of Dublin, in 1854, explained the problem,

Men, left in the lowest, or even anything approaching the lowest, degree of barbarism, in which they can possibly subsist at all, never did, and never can raise themselves, unaided, into a higher condition 152.

Because all human beings were sinners, and because 'enlightenment' depended on the grace of God, not only were people 'saved' from perdition, they were also, inevitably, saved to a new way of life, to a higher level of civilization than they could ever reach on their own. They were, by God's grace, and by the disciplines of their churches, delivered from lives of sloth and indigence into lives of industry and prosperity. Through this they would

overcome the present disposition either to sloth or to enjoyment. This habit is slowly acquired, and is in reality a principal distinction of nations in the advanced state of mechanic and commercial arts.
(Ferguson 1767 Part 2, Section 2)

As Herbert Schlossberg described,

In 1837 a clergyman in Leeds remarked that

the most established religion in Leeds is Methodism, and it is Methodism that all the most pious among the Churchmen unconsciously talk,

That is, Methodism, which by then had separated from the Church of England, had come to dominate the thinking of the city to the extent that even Anglicans had been swallowed up in its spirit, albeit without realizing it...

The "secular' 18th century, when we look beneath the surface, turns out to be the start of a profound spiritual revival. As it spread from the Church of England throughout the society, it affected the life of non-Anglican, or Dissenting, congregations. The chapels in which the dissenters worshiped increasingly rang with the ideas and hymns of the evangelical movement.
(2000, pp. 8, 10)

By the mid 19th century, Methodism would become the leavening of Victorian Britain. From the high, to the lower-middle, to the artisanal 'working class' (but seldom to the 'idle poor'), the British increasingly committed themselves to the understandings of Methodism, to a religiously invigorated capitalism.

The American War of Independence resulted in a hiatus in direct influences from Britain to the American colonies. The revival in Britain preceded a similar movement in the colonies by some thirty to forty years. The missionaries of the British 'Awakening' proved most effective as the colonies settled down and law and order were reimposed under the new United States administration.

As Mary Cayton (1997) explained, between 1794 and 1832 thousands of converts streamed into the non-conformist churches of British North America, and, as in Britain, the bulk of those who committed themselves to an active religious life were involved in petty-business. As Cayton said,

Especially in the Northeast, then rapidly being drawn into a net of complex market relationships, those entering upon the responsibilities of adulthood but also many of other life stages, and members of an emerging entrepreneurial class but also those of other stations and callings, were caught up in intensified religious expression.

They experienced conversions, joined organizations designed to promote a host of benevolent causes, and swelled church rolls. They were Congregationalists and Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists, and together they comprised a movement that historians in retrospect have called the Second Great Awakening.

First The Poor, Then The World! Return to Chapter Index

What started in Britain, very quickly reached outward to the whole world. Those who entered the movement in the 18th century knew that there were no geographical boundaries to bringing sinners to repentance. With Wesley, they asserted that the world was their parish.

Out of the 18th century religious revivals came the evangelical missionary movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. And, as they moved into the world, they took their Western European lower middle class values with them. As Cairns has described of missionary attitudes in central Africa in the 19th century,

The proper attitude was indicated by Carson of the L. M. S. [London Missionary Society] who, after noting that African men spent 'much time in indolence', remarked that it was inconceivable 'how the practice of that vice in the African race can be supposed to conduce to happiness in them when it makes us so miserable'.
(1965, p. 80)

Those who were 'born again' should, in the minds of these missionaries, be born into frugal, self-disciplined industry, into conserving possessions, into accumulating wealth, and into using the wealth they accumulated 'wisely'.

They took capitalism to the world. And, since people in other communities seemed to have so little internalized discipline, so little regard for prudent, productive endeavor, they realized they had a responsibility to discipline and train them.

Out of missionary endeavor among the poor, among the destitute in western Europe, and out of similar activity among the 'benighted' of other regions, came a strong belief in the need for practical education to teach converts to live as 'God had intended them to live'.

But, despite all its success in the Anglo-speaking world, and the extensive network of societies and churches which sprang from the movement, very few of those on the lowest rungs of the social order were drawn into the revival movement. The redemption of the lower middle rankings of British and North American communities still left large numbers of poor dispossessed and cast adrift in the century, relatively untouched by the revivals which had swept their countries.

The redemption of the artisans, tradespeople and small holders of the century did not predispose them to accepting the irreligion and laziness of the poor. It made them resolute in doing something about 'the problem'. They did not have to look far to find those who constituted it. They were on their own door step, a group of people who defied all law and morality. James Kay (1832) described the lower classes inhabiting a district in Manchester,

This district has sometimes been the haunt of hordes of thieves and desperados who defied the law, and is always inhabited by a class resembling savages in their appetites and habits. It is surrounded on every side by some of the largest factories of the town, whose chimneys vomit forth dense clouds of smoke, which hang heavily over this insalubrious region.

Capitalism was in full bloom! It was time for the new moral capitalist leaders of Britain to tame and civilize the hordes of thieves and desperadoes which lived on their own doorsteps. And they set about it with all the determination they had employed in building their new industrializing world.

End of Chapter

Chapter 5:
The Virtuous Capitalist, The Poor and the Wasteland Return to Index of Chapters

[Factory Workers] pamper themselves into nervous ailments by a diet too rich and exciting for their in-door occupations
(Andrew Ure 1835, p. 298)

Bubbles and Wasteland Return to Chapter Index

The trader, in rude ages, is short-sighted, fraudulent, and mercenary; but in the progress and advanced state of his art, his views are enlarged, his maxims are established: he becomes punctual, liberal, faithful, and enterprising; and in the period of general corruption, he alone has every virtue, except the force to defend his acquisitions. He needs no aid from the state, but its protection; and is often in himself its most intelligent and respectable member.
Adam Ferguson (1767 Pt 3, Section 4)

Ferguson's description of 18th century Western European gentry in the 2nd half of the 18th century is in stark contrast to Thomas Jefferson's description,

...they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. ...man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
(Thomas Jefferson, 1787 153)

Jefferson was a visitor to Europe and his reaction is that of a relatively detached outsider witnessing the consequences of the enlightened self-interest of the gentry: injustice and oppression of those least able to defend themselves - the poor.

Ferguson was a Scottish gentleman. He had lived inside the bubble of middle class Western European society all his life and saw everything outside that bubble as a wasteland which needed to be reclaimed.

If that wasteland was to be reclaimed, its inhabitants rescued from poverty, moral depravity and sloth, it would be because the gentry set the example and took responsibility both for 'developing' their environments and for re-educating the indolent poor. Those who practised enlightened self-interest did so for the most moral of reasons. They were securing the future for everyone. They needed protection from the state to ensure that all the benefits which flowed from enlightened self-interest were realized 154.

The wasteland was a 'nursery for thieves and villains'. They were poor because they were indisciplined and lazy, not because of the rapacious greed of the gentry! 155 The poor lacked the virtues that had become natural to the gentry.

When middle ranking people looked at a gentleman they saw a virtuous man. Adam Smith, in a book appropriately entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiments, explained it well. It was from the realization that such people were securing the future for everyone in society that there,

arises that eminent esteem with which all men naturally regard a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry, and application, though directed to no other purpose than the acquisition of fortune. The resolute firmness of the person who acts in this manner, and in order to obtain a great though remote advantage, not only gives up all present pleasures, but endures the greatest labor both of mind and body, necessarily commands our approbation. 156
(1759 Part 4 Ch. 2)

Such people did not merely pursue prudent self-interest for their own gain or because others insisted they should. They knew, in their own hearts, that prudent, self-interested industry and frugality were amongst the most important of the virtues:

In the steadiness of his industry and frugality, in his steadily sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present moment for the probable expectation of the still greater ease and enjoyment of a more distant but more lasting period of time, the prudent man is always both supported and rewarded by the entire approbation of the impartial spectator, and of the representative of the impartial spectator, the man within the breast.
(Smith 1759, Part 6 Section 1)

The 18th and 19th centuries were the centuries in which capitalism was to flourish, unfettered by laws and regulations. It was to be the period when the long-term impact of unregulated capitalism on the living conditions of the poor would become obvious.

What would happen to the least fortunate, to the inhabitants of the wastelands, when the 'steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry, and application, though directed to no other purpose than the acquisition of fortune' was allowed full play?

Who were 'The Poor'? Return to Chapter Index

They were the dispossessed, inhabitants of the wastelands of Western Europe. They were the rubble of feudal society. For them, feudal understandings 157, inevitably warped and altered by the centuries of turmoil, confrontation and change in western Europe, were still central.

But, the patron-client structures of the feudal past were gone. There were no patrons on whom they could rely, no institutional supports which might protect their rights. They had lost those over more than three hundred years of feudal decay and collapse. They had become

hordes of thieves and desperados who defied the law ... a class resembling savages in their appetites and habits
(James Kay (1832)).

Thomas More had described their plight two centuries earlier, when their patrons resolved 'to enclose many thousand acres of ground'.

... [T]he owners as well as tenants are turned out of their possessions, by tricks, or by main force, or being wearied out with ill-usage, they are forced to sell them.

By which means those miserable people, both men and women, married and unmarried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families (since country business requires many hands), are all forced to change their seats, not knowing whither to go; and they must sell almost for nothing their household stuff, which could not bring them much money, even though they might stay for a buyer.

When that little money is at an end, for it will be soon spent, what is left for them to do, but either to steal and so to be hanged (God knows how justly), or to go about and beg? And if they do this, they are put in prison as idle vagabonds
(1516, œUtopia , Book 1)

Not much had changed in two centuries!

They were the dispossessed of Western Europe, the weak who could not defend themselves against patrons turned capitalist (or, as Jefferson put it, 'turned wolf'). They constituted separate communities from the gentry, money makers and aristocracy of Europe, only connecting with them as menials, laborers, vagabonds and thieves. They had not socialized with or shared the interests and understandings of the middle ranks. The gentry, with their distinctive ways of living, moved in social spheres beyond their vision, and, largely, beyond their interest.

Among the more intemperate descriptions of these people is that given by œDaniel Defoe (1725?), son of a tallow chandler (a member of the Worshipful Company of Butchers) and aspiring member of the gentry. His writings grew in popularity through the 19th century:

How many frequent robberies are committed by these japanners? And to how many more are they confederates? Silver spoons, spurs, and other small pieces of plate, are every day missing, and very often found upon these sort of gentlemen; yet are they permitted, to the shame of all our good laws, and the scandal of our most excellent government, to lurk about our streets, to debauch our servants and apprentices, and support an infinite number of scandalous, shameless trulls, yet more wicked than themselves, for not a Jack among them but must have his Gill.

By whom such indecencies are daily acted, even in our open streets, as are very offensive to the eyes and ears of all sober persons, and even abominable in a Christian country.

In any riot, or other disturbance, these sparks are always the foremost; for most among them can turn their hands to picking of pockets, to run away with goods from a fire, or other public confusion, to snatch anything from a woman or child, to strip a house when the door is open, or any other branch of a thief's profession.

In short, it is a nursery for thieves and villains; modest women are every day insulted by them and their strumpets; and such children who run about the streets, or those servants who go on errands, do but too frequently bring home some scraps of their beastly profane wit; insomuch, that the conversation of our lower rank of people runs only upon bawdy and blasphemy, notwithstanding our societies for reformation, and our laws in force against profaneness; for this lazy life gets them many proselytes, their numbers daily increasing from runaway apprentices and footboys, insomuch that it is a very hard matter for a gentleman to get him a servant, or for a tradesman to find an apprentice 158.

Innumerable other mischiefs accrue, and others will spring up from this race of caterpillars, who must be swept from out our streets, or we shall be overrun with all manner of wickedness.

Who's to blame for their poverty and degrading circumstances? Return to Chapter Index

They were childish ingrates, who expected something for nothing, who refused to take life seriously and suffered the consequences of their indisciplined laziness. It was time for them to grow up, to accept responsibility for life, not live on unearned handouts.

Bernard Mandeville expressed it well. If one supported people through offering them unearned handouts they would become lazy and dependent on welfare.

Charity, where it is too extensive, seldom fails of promoting Sloth and Idleness, and is good for little in the Commonwealth but to breed Drones and destroy Industry.
(Appendix to 1724 edition of Fable of the Bees entitled 'An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools')

Samuel Smiles (1859), in a popular book of the mid 19th century, entitled 'Self-Help', provided the reasons why, after one hundred and fifty years of unregulated capitalism, the poor were still poor, all-too-often living and working in sub-human conditions. They were 'the extravagant', who 'wasted their resources'. It was their own fault if they were poor!

...the lesson of self-denial - the sacrificing of a present gratification for a future good - is one of the last that is learnt. Those classes which work the hardest might naturally be expected to value the most money which they earn. Yet the readiness with which so many are accustomed to eat up and drink up their earnings as they go, renders them to a great extent helpless and dependent upon the frugal.

Any class of men that lives from hand to mouth will ever be an inferior class. They will necessarily remain impotent and helpless, hanging on to the skirts of society, the sport of times and seasons. Having no respect for themselves, they will fail in securing the respect of others. In commercial crises, such men must inevitably "go to the wall." Wanting that husband power which a store of savings, no matter how small, invariably gives them, they will be at every man's mercy, and, if possessed of right feelings, they cannot but regard with fear and trembling the future possible fate of their wives and children.

"The world," once said Mr. Cobden to the working men of Huddersfield,

has always been divided into two classes - those who have saved, and those who have spent - the thrifty and the extravagant.

The building of all the houses, the mills, the bridges, and the ships, and the accomplishment of all other great works which have rendered man civilized and happy, has been done by the savers, the thrifty; and those who have wasted their resources have always been their slaves.

It has been the law of nature and of Providence that this should be so; and I were an imposter if I promised any class that they would advance themselves if they were improvident, thoughtless, and idle.

(œ1859, Chapter 9 Para.5)

œSamuel Scriven's 1842 report to the House of Commons on factory conditions in 'Mines and Manufactories', outlined the problems in dealing with the poor. No matter what good, virtuous gentlemen did, nothing could be improved so long as the poor behaved as they now did.

To contextualize Scriven's views, one needs to remember the contemporary situation in which he was writing.

The Speenhamland decrees 159 in the late 18th century allowed employers to pay "market rates" for labor, which soon drove wages below what was necessary to maintain subsistence. Parishes were required to make up the shortfall from their rates. The significance of this is that wages really did fall below what was considered necessary to ensure subsistence. It was not possible to live on the wages of just one or two members of the family without parish support.

In 1834 the Poor Laws were amended to remove this 'burden' from the parishes, transferring it to the poor. After all, what had they to complain about? All they had to do was 'get a job'.

Parents, in 1840, did not send children to work because they were 'proverbially improvident'. They desperately needed every penny they could get. As William Booth could still explain at the end of the century,

... the want of money is the cause of an immensity of evil and trouble. The moment you begin practically to alleviate the miseries of the people, you discover that the eternal want of pence is one of their greatest difficulties.
(œWilliam Booth (1890))

This, however, is clearly not the view of Samuel Scriven:

The manufacturers are gentlemen who 'evince a warm-hearted sympathy for those about them in difficulty or distress, contribute as much as possible to their happiness, and are never known to inflict punishments on the children, or to allow others to do so':

The manufacturers are a highly influential, wealthy, and intelligent class of men: they evince a warm-hearted sympathy for those about them in difficulty or distress, contribute as much as possible to their happiness, and are never known to inflict punishments on the children, or to allow others to do so.

It, would be invidious to particularise individuals, but I should do them injustice as a body if I did not acknowledge their liberality in allowing me unrestrained admission to every department of their works, as well as the desire they have shown to render me every assistance and co-operation, with the view of carrying out the objects of the Commission ...

They can hardly be held responsible for the consequences of the lifestyles of their proverbially improvident employees.

The processes being such as to admit of the employment of whole families father, mother, and some two, three, or more children - their united earnings are sometimes 3l. or 4l. per week: but, proverbially improvident, and adopting the adage,- "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof", they squander the proceeds of their labor in gaudy dress, or at the skittle-ground and ale-house; so that, when overtaken by illness or other casualty, and thrown for a few days out of work, they resort to their masters for a loan, or to the parish workhouse for relief.

Thoughtless and improvident parents, showing no regard for the consequences to their offspring, permit them to continue working in sub-standard conditions. So long as they can reap the advantages of their labor they encourage them to work in conditions like these:

The processes and departments to which I beg leave to direct your especial attention are the dipping, scouring, throwing, plate, saucer, and dish making, and printing, as those in which very young children are found. The effects I have observed in the first and second, on many of the older hands, and the evidence I have recorded from all, have satisfied me that they are the most pernicious and destructive in the whole process of potting.

It is true that in many instances persons have been known to have worked as dippers many years without any material consequences resulting, or being perceptible, and they will tell you "'tis not so bad now as formerly, when a greater proportion of the poisonous metal entered into the composition of the liquid;" but even in them, whose constitutions may have been less susceptible of its influences, I have been able to trace in their dull and cadaverous countenances its insidious workings.

In most of the rooms there are one or two adults, with their attendant boys, whose business it is to bring the ware in its rough, or, in the phraseology of the potter, in its biscuit state, from the warehouse or painting-room to the tub. By constant handling, the fingers become so smooth and delicate that they sometimes bleed, and thereby render the process of absorption more certain and rapid. The dipping itself; performed by the man, is momentary, and, when completed, the article is passed on to the boys for shelving and drying; the liquid consists of borax, soda, potash, with whiting, stone, and carbonate of lead, finely ground and mixed together with water; for coarse goods a large proportion of lead is used, and in some cases arsenic.

The workers seem to have a complete disregard of the dangers around them. They recklessly eat their meals in the most unhygienic of surroundings.

Both men and boys have their hands and cloths almost always saturated with it; and reckless of the danger they incur, seldom or ever change, or use precautionary measures, frequently taking their meals in the same room, sufficiently satisfied to wipe their hands on their aprons. I have never seen rooms provided for cleansing, although it appear in some of the returned schedules that there is plenty of water and at their command.

From their disregard of prophylactic measures; you will not be surprised that paralysis, colica pictonum, epilepsy, and a host of other nervous diseases; are to be met with in all their aggravated forms. The most constant, however, is that of partial paralysis of the extensors of the hands in men, and of epilepsy in children, accompanied at all times with obstinate constipation of the bowels and derangement of the alimentary canal.

But the strongest assurance that can be adduced of the deleterious effect that this process has on children, to be found in the evidence of the men themselves, who, when their affections have been appealed to as fathers of families, have invariably, to the question " Would bring your own son to the dipping-tub ?" replied " No: " and in the instance of John Cooper he continued because I love my child, and would rather that should live."

The average amount of weekly wages for men in this department is 30s., for boys 5s., which is higher than in many others, and obtained as an equivalent for " the risk they run." This pay is a strong temptation to the thoughtless and improvident parent, who, regardless of consequences to their offspring, permit them, so long as they reap the advantages of their labor, to continue in this pest-house.

The parents seem to have no interest in educating their children, sending them at too early a period of life to labor from morning till night.

The masters show the concern one would expect from socially aware gentlemen. They acknowledge and lament the children's low and degraded condition.

The problem really is the total indifference of the parents.

I almost tremble, however, when I contemplate the fearful deficiency of knowledge existing throughout the district, and the consequences likely to result to this increased and increasing population, and would willingly leave the evidence to speak for itself, did I not feel that I should ill discharge my duty were I to shrink from the task; on an examination of the minutes of evidence which I have the honour to forward from Cobridge, Burslem, etc. etc., it will appear that more than three-fourths of the persons therein named can neither read nor write.

An internee may be possibly drawn that I may have been partial in my selection of them, but I beg distinctly to be understood as having on all occasions had them before me irrespective of any educational competency they may have possessed. But it is not from my own knowledge that I proclaim their utter, their absolute ignorance. I would respectfully refer you to the evidence of their own pastors and masters, and it will appear that as one man they acknowledge and lament their low and degraded condition.

My experience has satisfied me that this state of things is attributable to the three following causes:

30) The first, and perhaps most prominent, I conceive to be that of sending children at too early a period of life to labor from morning till night, in hundreds of cases for 15 or 16 hours consecutively, with the intermission of only a few minutes to eat their humble food of " tatees" and " stir pudding", and where they acquire little else than vice, for the wages of ls. or 2s. per week, whereby they are necessarily deprived of every opportunity of attending a day or evening school.

31) Another is the total indifference of parents, who, although in numberless instances earning from 2s. to 3s. or 4s. per week, and not requiring the early labor of their offspring, nevertheless care so little about their immediate or future welfare, as to be equally satisfied whether they continue in ignorance or not.

32) A third is doubtless the poverty of others unemployed.

The workers appear to have no self-respect. They live in disgusting, squalid conditions,

The position of the town being elevated, and upon the brow of a hill, it is consequently exposed to the winds from all quarters, but more especially to the north-east, for a valley approaches the town in this direction, and serves to give force and increased effect to the cold winds which prevail from that quarter.

It is to this elevated position and free ventilation that I am disposed to attribute our comparative exemption from epidemic and certain endemic diseases, especially to the common fever of the country, which in the summer and autumn more particularly prevails in the surrounding towns of Burslem, Newcastle, and Stoke; whilst Hanley and Shelton suffer much less from the disease. But owing to this position and particular exposure to the most ungenial wind of the heavens, the north-east, I conceive a peculiar character is, to a certain extent, given to the diseases of the town-pulmonary affections prevailing very extensively.

The direction in which the streets are built might have slightly counteracted this unfavorable exposure, but unfortunately the inhabitants have, no doubt in ignorance and without design, given it increased effect by arranging most of the streets on the north-east and eastern side of the town in a direction parallel to the current of the wind when it blows from this quarter.

There is a small closely-built district near the centre of Hanley, called Chapel Field, and a series of blind streets branching off from the main street in Shelton, both which places are crowded with inhabitants living in squalid poverty. Many of the inhabitants of these spots, but especially the children, have a peculiarly sickly aspect, most probably from the poor and improper food they take, conjoined with the impure air they breathe. Numbers of children die during infancy in these quarters of the town, and fevers and other epidemic diseases prevail there most extensively and in their most virulent forms.

In different parts of the town and on its outskirts there are many stagnant pools in which vegetable matter is constantly undergoing a process of putrefaction, for they are used for the purpose of steeping hazel-rods in, to render them more pliant in the use to which they are applied, that of forming crates, in which the earthenware of the neighbourhood is packed.

They are very well paid in comparison with workers in other manufacturing districts but their improvidence is their undoing!

The wages paid in this neighbourhood are good, better than those of most other manufacturing districts. Habits of improvidence prevail notwithstanding extensively; and it not unfrequently happens that men who draw 3s. a-week for their own work and that of their children, suffer some of the evils and many of the irregularities of poverty.

Intemperance in intoxicating drinks is a serious evil among the working class. Many of them allowing their families almost to starve to beg in order that they may indulge in this vice. The numbers of public-houses, beer, and spirit shops being great, and the latter appearing to enjoy a very prosperous trade ...

The women do not acquire those domestic habits which would best fit them for housewives and mothers. They continue to work while they are pregnant and then send out their infants to nurse during the day.

The females, from being employed from an early age in the manufactories as transferrers painters, burnishers, etc., do not acquire those domestic habits which would best fit them for housewives and mothers: and it frequently happens that when they are bearing children they continue to labor in the manufactories, and send out their infants to nurse during the day, This is a source of great mortality amongst infants, for they are fed by their nurses chiefly with bread steeped in water, and they early become sickly, and die of various diseases of the digestive organs, those of the chest, or head ...

One could continue with this report, but it is simply more of the same: atrocious conditions, and improvident, irresponsible inhabitants who seem to disregard both their own and their children's wellbeing.

The Report concludes with a set of appendices in which both responsible people of the towns and employees in the various factories are given a voice. The conclusions to the first and last of these is given below.

Scriven Report: Doctors report on health conditions: Appendix No. 1. A few REMARKS on the GENERAL and sanatory condition of the town of HANLEY and SHELTON, and its Inhabitants, more especially with respect to the Health of the Children of the Working Classes:

...In conclusion I may add, as the result of my observation from a residence of 17 years in this town, during which time I have practised as a surgeon, that children are sometimes cruelly overworked, in the process of plate-making especially, and that in other labors, and in the collieries, they are exposed to very unhealthy occupations. They also suffer greatly from the improvident and intemperate habits of their parents. In such cases their clothing is defective, and especially towards the end of each week their food very scanty. Their education is exceedingly imperfect, and the religious instruction they receive ought to be much more contemplate in the department of morals.
(Signed) J. B. DAVIS, Surgeon

Perhaps we should allow the Reverend Aitken to have the final comment. Scriven Report: Teachers & Clergy reports: Appendix No. 119. LETTER from the Rev. R. E. Aitkens, incumbent of Hanley:

Sir;
To the inquiries which you have been pleased to submit to me respecting the moral condition of the children employed in the manufactories in this place, I cannot give any additional evidence to that which you have received from the worthy master of the National School, which you read in my presence before him, and which with some slight alterations, in which he concurred, I confirmed viva voce. I am not sure whether it was expressed in your notes that the school is under the superintendence of the incumbent of Hanley.

Respecting the two subjects of inquiry (at the bottom of p.10 and the top of p.11) to which, by your marginal mark, you have directed my especial attention, I beg to offer the following observations, which are the result of considerable experience.

I have almost invariably found that the habits invariably acquired by women, rendering them more or less fit to perform their duties as wives and mothers, depend infinitely less on the occupations by which they procure their maintenance, than in their domestic training by the instructions and examples of their mothers. Let the mother be industrious, notable, decorous, and devout, and generally you will find her daughters of the same character, whether they continue to reside at home and earn their livelihood by the use of the needle, or whether they are employed in the manufactories. I have uniformly found the case in this rank of life similar to the oft-debated and endless question of the respective advantages of public or private schools among the higher and middle classes of society. In both cases the eventual moral habits of individuals will depend more on the dispositions which they bring from home than what they acquire in the school or manufactory.

(15/01/16)

No reference is made to the consequences of changes in the Poor Laws. Wages are assumed to be more than adequate for the legitimate needs of the inhabitants. And adverse conditions are largely of their own making.

These were the conditions of 'the poor' in Britain after one hundred and fifty years of politically dominant capitalist development.

We need to ask how conditions like these emerged.

What shall we do with The Poor? Return to Chapter Index

In the 18th and 19th centuries, 'the poor' were to find that it was time for them to be re-educated. They were to become the 'mission field' for morally upright, responsible Western Europeans. And for the good of both 'decent society' and their immortal souls, they were to be taught discipline and obedience, they were to be taught to work. It would be a long, drawn-out and painful process, and those being re-educated would endure much misery and heartache, but they were going to be taught.

Although it might seem a cruel policy, the only reasonable way of dealing with those who needed help was to compel them to work. There were times in life when one had to be cruel to be kind. As James argued,

the social legislators of the Restoration aimed at nothing less than making the poor a source of profit to the state by forcing them to work for reduced wages.
(in Wilson 1969, p. 119)

But they did not do so vindictively. This was not a 'class war', it was a class-focused re-education program. As Wilson says,

what came to be regarded by later critics as a system of calculated brutality and repression arose in the first place not from unconcern or harshness, but out of a desire to protect the efforts of those local authorities who were trying hardest to improvise remedies.
(1969, p. 134)

The Poor are lazy with no desire to Better Themselves! Return to Chapter Index

A major problem encountered in dealing with 'the poor' was that they seemed to have little desire either to accumulate possessions or to save for the future 160. And, perhaps more importantly for those who now held the reins of power in Britain, and, increasingly, in the rest of western Europe, the poor did not seem to understand or appreciate the vital importance of work, for its own sake, that is, for its character building potential 161. This was not merely a concern of the 18th century. It had become an increasingly important concern of 'responsible' people over the previous two hundred years.

œEdmond Fitzmaurice explained that Sir William Petty, writing in 1665, recognized how intractable the problem was of getting 'The Poor' to work consistently. They seemed content "to live in a condition little above that of animals".

His own observations of the habits of the cloth-workers in England and of the Irish peasantry compelled him, however reluctantly, to the opinion that the general standard of living was as yet too low to make high daily wages of any advantage to the laborer, because of their tendency at once to reduce their hours and be content with wages just sufficient to support existence at a very low level of material civilization.

"It was observed," he says,

by clothiers and others who employ great numbers of poor people, that when corn is extremely plentiful that the labor of the poor is proportionately dear and scarce to be had at all, so licentious are they who labor only to eat, or rather to drink.

It was the same in Ireland, especially since the introduction of that

breadlike root, the potato. A day of two hours labor was there sufficient to make men to live after their present fashion, and the cheapness of food was the excuse for the people to live in a condition little above that of animals.

(1895, p. 220)

Sir Josiah Child, in 1668, put his finger on the problem,

And for our own Poor in England, it is observed, that they live better in the dearest Countries for Provisions, than in the cheapest, and better in a dear year than in a cheap, (especially in relation to the Publique Good) for that in a cheap year they will not work above two days in a week; their humor being such, that they will not provide for a hard time; but just work so much and no more, as may maintain them in that mean condition to which they have been accustomed.
(Josiah Child, œBrief Observations Concerning Trade and Interest of Money, London, Printed for Elizabeth Calvert at the Black-spread Eagle in Barbican, and Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the White-Heart in Westminster Hall. 1668)

The poor seemed focused on the present, unaware of the future, living from hand to mouth.

Sir Henry Pollexfen pronounced in 1697 that

the advances of wages hath proved an inducement to idleness; for many are for being idle the oftener because they can get so much in a little time;

and Bernard Mandeville in 1714 asserted that

Every Body knows that there is a vast number of Journey-men ... who, if by Four Days labor in a Week they can maintain themselves, will hardly be persuaded to work the fifth; and that there are Thousands of Laboring Men of all sorts, who will ... put themselves to fifty Inconveniences ... to make Holiday.

(Hatcher 1998, p. 68)

Ferguson identified the problem as one of being 'uncivilized'. In straying from speaking of the poor to speaking of the barbarian, Ferguson, in common with most other writers of the 18th century, betrayed his view of the poor in his own country. It was as though they belonged to another society, alien and devoid of the moral virtues of the civilized; impetuous, artful, rapacious, violent, deceitful and slothful,

Actuated by great passions, the love of glory, and the desire of victory, roused by the menaces of an enemy, or stung with revenge; in suspense between the prospects of ruin or conquest, the barbarian spends every moment of relaxation in the indulgence of sloth.

He cannot descend to the pursuits of industry or mechanical labor: the beast of prey is a sluggard; the hunter and the warrior sleeps, while women or slaves are made to toil for his bread.

But shew him a quarry at a distance, he is bold, impetuous, artful, and rapacious: no bar can withstand his violence, and no fatigue can allay his activity.
(œ1767 Part 2, Section 3)

As Foucault (1971) claimed, for 'responsible' western Europeans of the 17th and 18th centuries, sloth had become the worst of all sins, and productive labor the best of all disciplines and virtues, having its own, inevitable rewards.

'The poor', like the barbarians, appeared unable to understand why this should be so. Consequently, they labored for only so long as was necessary to supply their meager wants and needs and then focused on other activities, more often than not, various forms of 'time wasting' such as socializing and 'loitering'.

For 18th and 19th century reformers, 'loitering' was a pernicious pastime of those who were 'slothful', those who seemed content with their miserable lot and who clearly lacked all motivation to 'better themselves' 162. œJohn Marshall (1698), in a commentary on John Bunyan's writings, put it well,

Bunyan well knew that idleness engenders poverty and crime, and is the parent of every evil; and he exhorts his runner to the greatest diligence, not to 'fool away his soul' in slothfulness, which induces carelessness, until the sinner is remediless ...163

Born Again or Not - They need to Learn Discipline! Return to Chapter Index

The nature of the activity in which 18th century responsible people were to engage in getting the poor to commit to consistent work was strongly influenced by their religious predisposition. For those less religiously inclined, the poor could be disciplined to work through legal compulsions; for those who saw religious commitment as central, no amount of discipline, no depth of punishment could bring about the needed transformation until the heart and soul of the individual had been reborn 164.

For the great majority of middle ranking people, the answer lay in laws and regulations, in disciplining and directing the activity of those who threatened the prosperity of the age. But, for a significant minority, those who still strongly identified with the religious longings and ambitions of the 17th century, the problems of the age could not be overcome simply through compulsion and legislation. Before people could even contemplate such transforming changes in their lifestyles they needed to be empowered by God. People needed to be 'born again', starting out on a new life empowered by God to become sanctified in mind and body.

They would still have to yield to discipline, and they would still have to show that perseverance and industry which marked the truly moral person, but the transformation could not begin until they had been made into new people, saved to serve God in the way He chose (and Responsible Western Europeans knew) they should. Having yielded their lives to God, they should focus on the life before them, determined to "work out their salvation with fear and trembling".

œJohn Wesley, in 1762, adjured his followers,

Be always employed; lose no shred of time; gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost. And whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.

Only God could perform the miraculous transformation which was needed in the lives of those who were trapped in sloth and its consequences. Unless there was true repentance, born of clear understanding of the depths of depravity in which they were sunk, there could be no redemption.

The redeemed, in gratitude to God, would apply themselves unstintingly to virtuous, productive lives. As Charles Wesley, in a popular hymn of the period, wrote,

Depth of mercy, can there be, mercy still reserved for me? Can my God his wrath forebear, me the chief of sinners spare?

Isaac Watts put it equally eloquently,

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see!

Once that transformation had been made, it was the responsibility of the redeemed to make the most of the new lives they had received at God's hand.

Over the next two hundred years these alternative focuses were to produce very different determinations in those who held them.

Those who saw the future as one of discipline and punishment knew that attempting to relieve the sufferings of the poor would be counter-productive.

œHerbert Spencer (1884), in the late 19th century, was still wrestling with how best to ensure that 'The Poor' acquired 'the capacities needful for civilized life'. This had exercised the minds of 17th and 18th century writers like Petty, Child, Pollexfen, Marshall, Mandeville, Defoe, Ferguson and Townsend. Yet, at the end of the 19th century, it had still not been resolved.

Spencer explained what he believed was required to make the lower classes 'fit for the social state'. Those who felt sorry for the poor, who wanted to rescue them from the harshness of their lives, were working against the tide of human evolution. All the evils of the age; the poverty, degradation, maltreatment of the lower classes 'are unavoidable attendants on the adaptation now in progress':

To become fit for the social state, man has not only to lose his savageness, but he has to acquire the capacities needful for civilized life. Power of application must be developed; such modification of the intellect as shall qualify it for its new tasks must take place; and, above all, there must be gained the ability to sacrifice a small mediate gratification for a future great one.

The state of transition will of course be an unhappy state. Misery inevitably results from incongruity between constitutions and conditions. All these evils which afflict us, and seem to the uninitiated the obvious consequences of this or that removable cause, are unavoidable attendants on the adaptation now in progress.

Humanity is being pressed against the inexorable necessities of its new position - is being molded into harmony with them, and has to bear the resulting unhappiness as best it can. The process must be undergone, and the sufferings must be endured.

No power on earth, no cunningly-devised laws of statesmen, no world-rectifying schemes of the humane, no communist panaceas, no reforms that men ever did broach or ever will broach, can diminish them one jot.

Intensified they may be, and are; and in preventing their intensification, the philanthropic will find ample scope for exertion. But there is bound up with the changes a normal amount of suffering, which cannot be lessened without altering the very laws of life.
(1884 Ch. 3, p. 40)

For Spencer, as for the vast majority of 'responsible' Western Europeans of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, human beings were on a millenarian evolutionary journey. There was a direction to social change and that direction, provided people took their responsibilities seriously, was upwards, into a future of growing material prosperity and well-being.

The utopian presumptions of the previous two centuries 165 had become a part of the background of understanding for the 'middle sorts' of western Europe. And, with the absorption of these presumptions into the unconscious substrate of reasoning, the implied dangers of not pressing toward that goal of the 'upward call of God' became similarly internalized, no longer a matter of belief but one of certainty, no longer religiously justified, but now materially certified.

The progress of humanity was written into the material constitution of human beings, just as the changes in the earth's surface and in the heavens were increasingly being seen as consequences of inescapable and unstoppable 'forces of nature'.

The attitudes of western European employers in the 18th and 19th centuries toward the poor were hundreds of years in the making. By the 15th century, employers and landowners were already convinced that 'the poor' would only work consistently if compelled to do so. Their experiences following the Black Death of the mid 14th century 166, when labor became very scarce while the tasks to be done remained about the same as they had been when there was a much larger workforce, convinced them that they could not rely on the goodwill of those they employed.

Of course, if one sees the situation from the laborers' point of view, the demands made of them from the early 1350s onwards were entirely unreasonable. The presumption that those who remained would meet all the laboring demands previously met by as much as double their number five years earlier, resulted in them being required to work for very long hours, for very little more reward.

Since they were geared to labor as a means of meeting needs and wants rather than as a means to the open ended accumulation of money and possessions, once they obtained the cash they needed it seemed pointless to continue working. There were better things to do than work when the product was no longer needed.

How deep-seated such understandings and motivations in life are, and how difficult it is to retrain people to new perspectives. 'Responsible' western Europeans had been passing laws and organizing processes of retraining for 'the poor' for more than three hundred years before the concerted efforts of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The 'responsible public' of the 18th century was, undoubtedly, largely comprised of self-serving, self-interested, self-promoting individuals who wanted the world organized to their benefit. They were, however, nonetheless, convinced of the historical necessity underpinning the reforms they supported.

The world, for them, was becoming, more and more certainly, a world of resources and a world of productive, wealth-generating activity. They were the vanguard of the future, creating a world which would benefit all. But, to effectively pursue these goals, the laziness, indiscipline and profanity of the 'lower rank' had to be addressed. œDaniel Defoe, of Robinson Crusoe fame, described the problem in the 1720s,

... the conversation of our lower rank of people runs only upon bawdy and blasphemy, notwithstanding our societies for reformation, and our laws in force against profaneness; for this lazy life gets them many proselytes, their numbers daily increasing from runaway apprentices and footboys, insomuch that it is a very hard matter for a gentleman to get him a servant, or for a tradesman to find an apprentice.

In the 18th century, following a relative lull in activities during the later 17th century, the enclosure of common land, dispossession of peasant landholders and consolidation of landholdings took on new momentum. As it did so, the ranks of dispossessed and indigent people were swelled by those moved from the land. The common view of 18th century reformers was that almost half of the land available for farming in Britain was 'waste', that is, not used 'profitably'. They set out to make it economically productive and efficient.

They'll work if they're hungry! Return to Chapter Index

The poor know little of the motives which stimulate the higher ranks to action - pride, honour, and ambition. In general it is only hunger which can spur and goad them on to labor; yet our laws have said, they shall never hunger. The laws, it must be confessed, have likewise said that they shall be compelled to work.

But then legal constraint is attended with too much trouble, violence, and noise; creates ill will, and never can be productive of good and acceptable service: whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but, as the most natural motive to industry and labor, it calls forth the most powerful exertions; and, when satisfied by the free bounty of another, lays a lasting and sure foundation for good will and gratitude ...

The wisest legislator will never be able to devise a more equitable, a more effectual, or in any respect a more suitable punishment, than hunger is for a disobedient servant. Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjection, to the most brutish, the most obstinate, and the most perverse.
(œJoseph Townsend 1786 )

Sir Josiah Child had identified the problem in the 17th century, the poor "work so much and no more, as may maintain them in that mean condition to which they have been accustomed". It was time to make sure that they received no more than would keep them working. And it was time to take away any supports the poor might be relying on other than wage labor.

The 'responsible' people of the mid 18th century found a way to do this which would both force the poor into a consistent commitment to work and ensure the rational reorganization of the countryside. They accelerated the alienation of common lands and the dispossession of small holders:

The enclosure of commons had been going on for centuries before 1760, but with nothing like the rapidity with which it has been going on since, it is known that 554,974 acres were enclosed between 1710 and 1760, while nearly 7,000,000 were enclosed between 1760 and 1845.
(œArnold Toynbee (1884))

The dispossession of small holders gathered momentum as the 18th century unfolded. Toynbee (1884) summarized the movement,

A third result of landlord supremacy was the manner in which the common-field system was broken up. Allusion has already been made to enclosures, and enclosures meant a break-up of the old system of agriculture and a redistribution of the land. This is a problem which involves delicate questions of justice.

In Prussia, the change was effected by impartial legislation; in England, the work was done by the strong at the expense of the weak. The change from common to individual ownership, which was economically advantageous, was carried out in an iniquitous manner, and thereby became socially harmful.

Great injury was thus done to the poor and ignorant freeholders who lost their rights in the common lands.

In Pickering, in one instance, the lessee of the tithes applied for an enclosure of the waste. The small freeholders did their best to oppose him, but, having little money to carry on the suit, they were overruled, and the lessee, who had bought the support of the landless 'house-owners' of the parish, took the land from the freeholders and shared the spoil with the cottagers.

It was always easy for the steward to harass the small owners till he forced them to sell... The enclosure of waste land, too, did great damage to the small freeholders, who, without the right of grazing, naturally found it so much the more difficult to pay their way.

Those who lost access to lands joined the ranks of 'the poor', forced to live on the charity of parishes or move to the outskirts of towns in an attempt to find some alternative means of subsistence. As they did so, the 'problem of the poor' became increasingly obvious to responsible citizens 167.

The problems attending the enclosure of common lands were just the tip of the iceberg. At the same time as people who relied on common lands found themselves denied access, small holders who held sufficient land to make ends meet found that their lands, in the eyes of those who held political power, were 'waste land' that could be 'more productively' used. They found the political conditions of the time stacked against them.

Large landowners had gained the whip hand and set out to dispossess the yeomen of England of the lands they held:

To summarise the movement: it is probable that the yeomen would in any case have partly disappeared, owing to the inevitable working of economic causes. But these alone would not have led to their disappearance on so large a scale. It was the political conditions of the age, the overwhelming importance of land, which made it impossible for the yeoman to keep his grip upon the soil.
Toynbee (1884)

People who, until the mid 18th century, had felt themselves relatively safe from the dispossession experienced by rural laborers and others who relied heavily on access to the commons for survival, now found themselves the target of land reform.

Their problems were not only brought on by rapacious landlords and changes in statutes which were strongly weighted against them. They were compounded by the movement of industry through the 18th century from the countryside into towns. Traditionally, small holders had augmented their income by spinning, weaving and other forms of handicraft. As these activities became the focus of factory development, the returns for their labors were greatly reduced. Very often the market for their produce simply disappeared.

Many who were not evicted or defrauded of their properties, found that they could no longer make a living from the land they held, and were either compelled by circumstance into sending more and more members of their households into towns in search of work, or found themselves having to accept the very low prices being offered for rural land and move to the rapidly growing towns and cities of western Europe (but particularly of England). And, as is always true under capitalism, the increased labor which became available to employers resulted in constant reductions in wages.

We'll Compel Them through Laws and Regulations! Return to Chapter Index

For the Middle Ranks, of course, the problems were not those of dispossession and abuse, they were problems of sloth and intemperance, which inevitably resulted in crime and violence. The poor were fundamentally lazy and unwilling to put the needs of the country above their own petty concerns and interests. They would, if they could, undermine all that was being achieved in ensuring the 'wealth of the nation'.

The indolent poor must be compelled to contribute to the prosperity of the country, and the government must act strongly and decisively to deal with what was rapidly becoming not 'the poor' but 'the criminal' class. John Simon described the scene,

Sir Samuel Romilly [1786] in his Observations on a Late Publication, intituled Thoughts on Executive Justice, reviews the criminal law of England, and says -

The first thing which strikes one is the melancholy truth that among the variety of actions which men are daily liable to commit, no less than one hundred and sixty have been declared by Act of Parliament to be felonies without benefit of clergy; or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death. [168 ]

Romilly founds his statement on Blackstone's Commentaries; and, in a note, he draws attention to the fact that, since the publication of those Commentaries, the number of felonies had been considerably augmented by the legislature. Sydney says

To steal a horse or a sheep; to snatch property from the hands of a man and run away with it; to steal to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, or privately to the value of five shillings in a shop; to pick a pocket of only twelve pence and a farthing; these offences all continued till the end of the eighteenth century to be punishable with death.
England and the English, vol. ii. pp. 268, 269.

Mr. John Latimer, in The Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, gives a list of the persons executed in that city during the first half of the eighteenth century. The list is confessedly incomplete, but, so far as we can judge by its details, executions for murder were comparatively infrequent. Out of the seventy-seven criminals whose cases and crimes are cited, only eighteen suffered death for murder. The rest were executed for offences, which would now be punished by imprisonment.

It is no wonder that the number of executions in England was great. Lecky tells us that, when Blackstone wrote, it was a very ordinary occurrence for ten or twelve culprits to be hung on a single occasion, and for forty or fifty to be condemned at a single assize. In 1732 no less than seventy persons received sentence of death at the Old Bailey. In the same year eighteen persons were hung in one day in the town of Cork.
History of England, vol. i. p. 505.

... It is painful to record these brutalities, but it is impossible to understand the temper of the English people in the eighteenth century unless we do so. An utter callousness to the sufferings of criminals prevailed. We may go further. Those sufferings were a source of pleasurable excitement to the crowds that witnessed them. When the death-carts rumbled along the road from Newgate to Tyburn, the pavements were crowded with spectators. From the windows of the houses, hosts of people looked out with admiration upon the jaunty men who, with nosegays on their breasts, journeyed on the solemn path that broke away so suddenly into eternity.

Let the wanderer along the present Oxford Street imagine the scene. Let him try to conceive the possibility of its repetition to day. He will then be able to form some idea of the immeasurable distance that divides us from the spirit and the customs of the eighteenth century.

We ask in amazement if any voice was raised in Church or State, against the brutal punishments contained in the criminal code of England. The answer is disappointing. The ascertained facts show that, so far as the executions for felony are concerned, not only was there an absence of protest, but such executions were approved by the most enlightened opinion of the time.
(œ1908 p. 63)

Boswell recorded a discussion between Samuel Johnson and Sir William Scott in 1783, when told that criminals to be hanged were no longer to be publicly paraded on the way to execution,

... He said to Sir William Scott, 'The age is running mad after innovation; all the business of the world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation.'

It having been argued that this was an improvement,-'No, Sir, (said he, eagerly,) it is NOT an improvement: they object that the old method drew together a number of spectators. Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators they don't answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the publick was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?'

I perfectly agree with Dr. Johnson upon this head, and am persuaded that executions now, the solemn procession being discontinued, have not nearly the effect which they formerly had.
(œBoswell 1791)

Punishments were not to be viewed as acts of vengeance, but as cautionary devices, discouraging others from similar behavior (reminiscent, of course, of œThomas More's 1516 description:

...the severe execution of justice upon thieves, who ... were then hanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty on one gibbet

- there has been a long history of blaming and punishing victims in western Europe).

Throughout the century, the vastness of the problem, and the difficulties of dealing with it, occupied the minds of socially aware, responsible people. Those most directly involved in addressing the problem felt a sense of hopeless frustration at the immensity of the task which confronted them. It was not that a few of the 'lower rank' were lazy and degenerate, this seemed to be the condition of everyone.

E. P Thompson described the attitude of Josiah Tuck, dean of Gloucester, in 1745,

'the lower class of people' were utterly degenerated. Foreigners (he sermonized) found 'the common people of our populous cities to be the most abandoned, and licentious wretches on earth': 'Such brutality and insolence, such debauchery and extravagance, such idleness, irreligion, cursing and swearing, and contempt of all rule and authority... Our people are drunk with the cup of liberty.'
(1967, pp. 80-81)

Daniel Defoe in the 1720s seems to have put the common view of 'responsible members of the public' into words in a pamphlet entitled, œEverybody's Business Is Nobody's Business Or, Private Abuses, Public Grievances: Exemplified In the Pride, Insolence, and exorbitant Wages of our Women, Servants, Footmen, etc. , which rapidly ran to five editions.

As he says in the preface to the fifth edition, his intentions, in writing the pamphlet have,

had the good fortune to meet with approbation from the sober and substantial part of mankind; as for the vicious and vagabond, their ill-will is my ambition.

His language is blunt and his views uncompromising,

It is with uncommon satisfaction I see the magistracy begin to put the laws against vagabonds in force with the utmost vigour, a great many of those vermin ... having lately been taken up and sent to the several work-houses in and about this city; and indeed high time, for they grow every day more and more pernicious...

I, therefore, humbly propose that these vagabonds be put immediately under the command of such taskmasters as the government shall appoint, and that they be employed, punished, or rewarded, according to their capacities and demerits; that is to say, the industrious and docible to woolcombing, and other parts of the woollen manufacture, where hands are wanted, as also to husbandry and other parts of agriculture.

His solution to the problem of the unreliability of day workers and servants was to pass innumerable laws and regulations governing their behavior with which they

must either comply or be termed an idle vagrant, and sent to a place where they shall be forced to work. By this means industry will be encouraged, idleness punished, and we shall be famed, as well as happy for our tranquillity and decorum.

Not only were the poor idle, irreligious and wanton, those who were employed could simply not be trusted. Defoe's pamphlet provides one example after another of the duplicity, deceit and light-fingeredness of servants and other employees. They displayed

saucy and insolent behavior, ...pert, and sometimes abusive answers, [and] daring defiance of correction.

If they were not watched constantly, they would cheat their employers of all their belongings.

E. P. Thompson described the lengths to which Crowley, owner of the Crowley Iron Works, went in attempting to get his employees to work and in trying to protect himself from their blatant dishonesty. In preambles to two of the 'Orders' of the extensive 'Law Book' of the Company, Crowley wrote,

I having by sundry people working by the day with the connivance of the clerks been horribly cheated and paid for much more time than in good conscience I ought and such hath been the baseness and treachery of sundry clerks that they have concealed the sloath and negligence of those paid by the day...

To the end that sloath and villany should be detected and the just and diligent rewarded, I have thought meet to create an account of time by a monitor, and do order and it is hereby ordered and declared from 5 to 8 and from 7 to 10 is fifteen hours, out of which take 1½for breakfast, dinner, etc. There will then be thirteen hours and a half neat service...

[This service must be calculated] after all deductions for being at taverns, alehouses, coffee houses, breakfast, dinner, playing, sleeping, smoaking, singing, reading of news history, quarelling, contention, disputes or anything foreign to my business, any way loytering.
(1967, pp. 81-2)

The stress on the 'period of work', and of ensuring that employees worked their full number of hours, was, of course, not new to the 18th century. It was a growing concern of merchants and landowners through the late 14th and 15th centuries, and it grew in importance in succeeding centuries 169. By the 18th century, Crowley felt it unnecessary to justify this stress.

Everyone who mattered knew that people labored for a set period of time each day, and that they ought to spend all of that time 'on the job'. Work was not simply 'labor', it was spending a set time in a 'place of employment' where the time was 'owned' by the employer.

Not only 'the poor' were organized to 'work time' and 'leisure' or 'non-work' time, so were the industrious middle sorts. Only the gentry, who spent their time in 'public' activities, were not organized in this way. But they too had their sphere of service and should, also, allot a period in each day to the performance of their 'duties'.

While one could rely on responsible members of the community taking their work commitments seriously, this simply could not be assumed of 'the poor'. They would cheat and steal and rob employers of the time they wanted to be paid for. Only constant vigilance, thorough regulation and supervision could ensure that they spent their time in work rather than in taverns, alehouses, and coffee houses, 'loitering' rather than working.

The poor were, as they had been seen for centuries, unreliable, untrustworthy, dishonest, lazy and duplicitous. Responsible people in the 18th century realized that if they continued in this 'savage' state they threatened all the advances of civilization which seemed promised in the century.

Something had to be done to address what, to the responsible citizens of Britain and the rest of western Europe, was both a disgrace and a dire threat to the well-being of every responsible person. This mass of unredeemed, degenerate humanity had to be redeemed, retrained, made responsible.

Let's Train their Young Return to Chapter Index

In the 18th century, as in earlier centuries, the means to ensuring conscientious commitment to work by employees were all based on external regulations and legal compulsions. If enough pressure was applied, and people were organized and supervised thoroughly, their work commitment would improve. Government provided the background legislation compelling the poor to work, and individual industrial enterprises provided additional structures and regulations ensuring that laborers really did labor.

(16/01/16)

But, despite all these measures, the problem of getting the poor to take their laboring responsibilities seriously seemed worse than ever. It was clear that the problem could not be addressed simply by trying to coerce and police adults. It was very difficult to change the habits of a lifetime.

Aphorisms were at hand to justify one of the approaches to retraining the poor: You can't teach an old dog new tricks; you've got to break a horse when it's young. If laws and regulations alone did not work, perhaps overt training of the young would do it.

Edgar Furniss described a range of opinions on the matter expressed during the 18th century,

Very significant of the point of view of these writers are the projects which they advanced for shaping and moulding the characters and destinies of the children of the laboring classes.

Many of these projects strike the modern reader as almost fantastic distortions of justice, but it is necessary that we bear in mind, in attempting to gain an insight into the attitude of their authors, that the proposals were advanced for the good of the nation, and not for the immediate benefit of the children who were to supply the material for experimentation.

William Temple, always an extremist in his point of view, devised one of these:

When these children are four years old, they shall be sent to the country workhouse and there taught to read two hours a day and be kept fully employed the rest of their time in any of the manufactures of the house which best suits their age, strength and capacity.

If it be objected that at these early years, they cannot be made useful, I reply that at four years of age there are sturdy employments in which children can earn their living; but besides, there is considerable use in their being, somehow or other, constantly employed at least twelve hours in a day, whether they earn their living or not; for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them ...
(William Temple, Essay (1770))

(œ1920, p.114 170)

Children had to be taught, as John Locke (1692) had explained in the late 17th century, to defer gratification of immediate, imprudent desires and lusts in favor of working towards long-term, prudent rewards for diligent endeavor. This would benefit not only the individuals themselves, but also their dependents and communities.

They had to learn the immorality, the sinfulness of sloth and the virtue, the sanctifying power of industry. The evangelist of the age, John Wesley, put it very clearly,

Know ye not then so much as this, you that are called moral men, that all idleness is immorality; that there is no grosser dishonesty than sloth; that every voluntary blockhead is a knave? He defrauds his benefactors, his parents, and the world; and robs both God and his own soul.

Yet how many of these are among us! How many lazy drones, as if only fruges consumere nati! "born to eat up the produce of the soil." How many whose ignorance is not owing to incapacity, but to mere laziness!
(œ1741 sermon)

It was becoming clear to 18th century responsible people that the horse must be broken when young, or not at all. As Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas explained in 1777,

Obedience is one of the capital benefits arising from a public education, for though I am very desirous of having young minds impregnated with classical knowledge, from the pleasure I have derived from it, as well as the utility of it in all stations of life, yet it is but a secondary benefit in my estimation of education; for to break the natural ferocity of human nature, to subdue the passions and to impress the principles of religion and morality, and give habits of obedience and subordination to paternal as well as political authority, is the first object to be attended to by all schoolmasters who know their duty and do it.
(œThe Gentleman's Magazine (1811) Volume 109 p. 449 171)

Through the second half of the 18th century, and on into the 19th, both focuses were to be developed. On the one hand, laws and regulations compelling people to work would be strengthened and applied more and more vigorously, and alternative means of material support would be removed wherever possible. On the other, increasing emphasis would be placed on training the young.

This was not, of course, education, as given to the children of the middle ranks. That might well back-fire, giving the children of the poor ideas which were beyond their station. Among those who had not been directly involved in or affected by the religious revivals of the period, the view of education for the masses which Bernard Mandeville expressed in 1724 seems to have been standard,

From what has been said it is manifest, that in a free Nation where Slaves are not allow'd of, the surest Wealth consists in a Multitude of laborious Poor; for besides that they are the never-failing Nursery of Fleets and Armies, without them there could be no Enjoyment, and no Product of any Country could be valuable.

To make the Society happy and People easy under the meanest Circumstances, it is requisite that great Numbers of them should be Ignorant as well as Poor. Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer things a Man wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supplied.

The Welfare and Felicity therefore of every State and Kingdom, require that the Knowledge of the Working Poor should be confined within the Verge of their Occupations, and never extended (as to things visible) beyond what relates to their Calling. The more a Shepherd, a Plowman or any other Peasant knows of the World, and the things that are Foreign to his Labor or Employment, the less fit he'll be to go through the Fatigues and Hardships of it with Chearfulness and Content.

Reading, Writing and Arithmetick, are very necessary to those, whose Business require such Qualifications, but where People's livelihood has no dependence on these Arts, they are very pernicious to the Poor, who are forced to get their Daily Bread by their Daily Labor....

Going to School in comparison to Working is Idleness, and the longer Boys continue in this easy sort of Life, the more unfit they'll be when grown up for downright Labor, both as to Strength and Inclination. Men who are to remain and end their Days in a Laborious, Tiresome and Painful Station of Life, the sooner they are put upon it at first, the more patiently they'll submit to it for ever after.
(Fable of the Bees (1724) Appendix: œAn Essay On Charity, and Charity Schools).

This view of the educational requirements of the poor remained dominant through the century. An anonymous writer to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1797 put it even more clearly,

Industry is the great principle of duty that ought to be inculcated on the lowest class of the people, as it is the best and most effectual barrier against vices of every kind; as it occupies the mind, and leaves no vacancy for licentious thoughts and mischievous projects...

The laborious occupations of life must be performed by those who have been born in the lowest stations; but no one will be willing to undertake the most servile employment, or the meanest drudgery, if his mind is opened, and his abilities increased, by any tolerable share of scholastic improvement: yet these employments and this drudgery must be necessarily performed... and, surely, none can be more properly fitted for this purpose than those who have been born in a state of poverty.

The man, whose mind is not illuminated by one ray of science, can discharge his duty in the most sordid employment without the smallest views of raising himself to a higher station, and can take his rest at night in perfect satisfaction and content.

His ignorance is a balm that soothes his mind into stupidity and repose, and excludes every emotion of discontentment, pride and ambition. A man of no literature will seldom attempt to form insurrections, or plan an idle scheme for the reformation of the state.
(in Goldstrom 1972, p. 22,3)

Mr Davies Giddy, member of parliament, in a debate on the Parochial Schools Bill in 1807 172, expanded on the problems of educating the poor:

['The giving of education to the laboring classes' would] be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employments to which their rank in society had destined them; instead of teaching them subordination, it would render them factious and refractory, as was evident in the manufacturing counties; it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books, and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors; and, in a few years, the result would be, that the legislature would find it necessary to direct the strong arm of power towards them...
(in Goldstrom 1972, p. 29)

For these people the problem was one best dealt with by direct means:

The impact of the 18th century revivals resulted in a very different approach being employed by those who accepted that they had a duty of care for the weak and the poor.

The 19th century saw the proliferation of day schools for the poor. The aims of the schools, however, were in line with sentiments expressed through the 18th and 19th centuries. Wilmot's views on education for the poor, given above, seem to have summed up the aims of most day schools. The aims of public school education for the middle classes were rather different (though public schools did emphasize "habits of obedience and subordination to paternal as well as political authority").

An advertisement explaining the object of the Kennington District Schools, in 1824, provides a clear explanation of their purpose,

The object in forming Establishments of this nature, which now happily exist in almost every Parish and District throughout the Kingdom, is, to train the Infant Poor to good and orderly habits, - to instil into their minds an early knowledge of their civil and religious duties, - to guard them, as far as possible, from the seductions of vice, - and to afford them the means of becoming good Christians, as well as useful and industrious Members of Society: - These are the benefits proposed by the Promoters of these Schools; benefits, it is presumed, not more essential to the Children themselves, and their Parents, than to the Community at large.
(Silver and Silver 1974, p.1)

As a consequence of the 18th century revivals, Sunday Schools 173 emerged in the second half of the century as a means of providing a rudimentary education to both children and adults in association with religious worship services.

Samuel Scriven, in his 1842 Report to Parliament, described what he considered to be the value of the Sunday schools he investigated,

There are in the district Sunday-schools belonging to the church, and to dissenters of many denominations, but chiefly to Methodists of the "Wesleyan", " New Connexion", "Christian Association", and "Primitive" connexion. In these are congregated immense numbers of children of both sexes.

The practice of all is to open their doors at nine o'clock in the morning, and close them at half past ten, when they retire to the religious worship of their respective churches or chapels: to open again at one o'clock, and retire at half past two generally, for the same purpose, thus giving three hours of instruction deducting half an hour for prayer and singing, with which they commence their duties.

There are defects in the system of Sunday-school training, or whence arises the fact of children whose depositions I hand you from Burslem, the very pride of the potteries, their very seat of learning, being so profoundly ignorant as not to know one letter from another, and yet regularly "attend Sunday schools" my deliberate opinion is; that in an educational point of view they are not doing the good which is attributed to them: first, on account of the limitation of the hours of schooling; next; from the absence of writing, and other such secular instruction; and, thirdly, on account of the teachers; who with honour be it spoken, are eight-tenths of the working classes, yet unequal to the task of teaching.

I do not mean to detract from the merits of Sunday-schools as a source of religious knowledge, which by some is considered the basis upon which all others should be built, or from the moral effects resulting from the congregating of children in religious places; or from associating with religious friends; but would rather give my humble praise to the many sects who have with such determined efforts striven to stem the torrent of infidelity, profligacy, and drunkenness, and continue with pious zeal, in imitation of their founder, to extend the knowledge and love of God. 174

And ... No Charity!! Return to Chapter Index

Among the most unfortunate consequences of government 'hand-outs', in the minds of many writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, was their negative impact on the willingness of the poor to work. One of several writers quoted by œEdgar Furniss (1920), in examining the issue, was William Temple,

Temple wrote at a time when the poor rates were computed at two and a half millions of pounds annually and were continually on the increase; when the minds of men were filled with fresh memories of the destructive riots which the past four years had seen; when, in fact, there seemed to be lacking no evidence of the despair-engendered viciousness of the lower classes necessary to convince the short-sighted observers of the day of their innate depravity.

Temple proceeded to find the cause of this immorality in the existing laws for poor relief:

Our poor laws are at present a snare to the poor, and leave them loose to idleness, debauchery and insolence; because they depend on these laws for support in necessity; and knowing that a justice of the peace will relieve them, they despise parish officers, insult the inhabitants, and do not feel themselves obliged to their benefactors for what they receive.

It is upon the poor laws that the poor rely and not upon their own behavior and conduct; and this tends to destroy all subordination as well as gratitude and mutual esteem. (William Temple, 1770, Essay)

But the writer's belief that the poor laws were responsible for the condition he decried, did not cause him to absolve the laborer from all blame for his " idleness, debauchery, and insolence."

The reaction of the laborers toward these well-intentioned efforts to ease their life conditions, was rather construed as evidence of a deep-lying moral taint in the character of the people, a proneness to evil which became pronounced in the presence of conditions in the least degree favorable to an indulgence of their congenital habits of indolence and debauchery.

Temple concluded that life had been made too easy for the laborer, that he had fallen into the evil ways so congenial to his temperament, and that necessity alone could enforce labor - the labor which the poor man owed to his nation; necessity, visualized in hard times, low wages, high prices, toil-inducing want.

This is the one strong note which sounds through the writings of the eighteenth-century social reformers, the demand for rigorous life conditions to discipline the laborer and purge his character of the evil habits of "luxury" and "sloth," a demand which takes a variety of forms during the period, advocating different expedients, all calculated to render the hard lot of the laboring classes still harder....
(Furniss 1920, pp. 106-7)

Joseph Townsend, in œA Dissertation on the Poor Laws, in 1786, provided perhaps the most rational, calculated solution to the problem of compelling the poor to work when he suggested that the best means was to strip them of all alternative means of livelihood; and reduce wages to the bare minimum required for subsistence. The problem, as many had explained through more than two centuries, was that the poor would work for only so long as they absolutely had to in order to obtain their subsistence. If they could do this in three or four days of work then they would only work for that period. So, it was clearly counterproductive to provide them with above-subsistence wages.

For Townsend, as for Mandeville, Temple, Ferguson and many other writers of the century, one of the greatest errors of reformers over the previous two centuries was that they had attempted to deal with the problem of poverty by providing welfare payments of various kinds to those who were destitute. In doing so, they expanded and perpetuated the very problem they were trying to address 175.

First, Townsend states the problem, stemming, he believes 176, from the old monastic system which supported the poor in their indolence and was dismantled when Henry VIII, in the early 16th century, broke up the monasteries and appropriated their possessions.

At the dissolution of the monasteries, the lazy and the indigent, who were deprived of their accustomed food, became clamorous, and, having long since forgot to work, were not only ready to join in every scheme for the disturbance of the state, but, as vagrants, by their numbers, by their impostures, and by their thefts, they rendered themselves a public and most intolerable nuisance 177.

According to Townsend, these wretches, once succored by the Church and, in the main, a product of the foolishness of misplaced charity, were, with the breakup of the feudal Church in England, forced to fend for themselves. Only, having for so long been fed and clothed by the religious communities, they no longer possessed the skills, motivation or inclination to work for their own living.

Now, according to Townsend, in the latter part of the 18th century, it was time to seriously address the problem posed by the descendants of those lazy and indigent wards of the Church. And, since the responsible people of the age now approached everything rationally, presuming that in a rational consideration of the elements of a problem the solution would become plain, this problem should be approached in that way.

There never was greater distress among the poor: there never was more money collected for their relief. But what is most perplexing is, that poverty and wretchedness have increased in exact proportion to the efforts which have been made for the comfortable subsistence of the poor; and that wherever most is expended for their support, there objects of distress are most abundant; whilst in those countries or provincial districts where the least provision has been made for their supply, we hear the fewest groans. Among the former we see drunkenness and idleness cloathed in rags; among the latter we hear the chearful songs of industry and virtue.
(Townsend 1786)

So, the solution was obvious, take away charity. Misplaced charity breeds the problems it claims to address. Force the poor to fend for themselves and they will develop those skills which they presently lack. Having learned to work, they will come to enjoy it and their regions will resound to "the chearful songs of industry and virtue".

How could the state go about this without provoking widespread civil unrest? Again, Townsend claimed, to understand the solution one needed to examine measures previously tried and determine why they had failed.

Through the previous two hundred years, the major approaches to the problem of the laziness and indigence of the poor had involved legislation and social compulsion. Innumerable laws had been passed compelling the poor to work. None had succeeded. Even more laws had been passed, and draconian penalties applied to address the immorality and dishonesty of the idle poor; again, without any apparent success in dealing with the problems of crime and immorality among the poor. So, to continue with either of these seemed pointless.

The poor were clearly not motivated to work through any sense of pride in achievement, ambition or self-respect. They were 'not yet civilized'. But they must be taught to work. Best, therefore, to resort, not to manmade laws and compulsions, which are seldom successful, but to those 'natural' motives which drive human beings to labor.

Freemen should not be compelled to work, but they can be motivated by lowering their incomes to levels which will reduce them to 'the bread line'. Then they will work because they need to, and the wages they receive will lay

...a lasting and sure foundation for good will and gratitude.

The slave must be compelled to work; but the freeman should be left to his own judgment and discretion; should be protected in the full enjoyment of his own, be it much or little; and punished when he invades his neighbour's property. By recurring to those base motives which influence the slave, and trusting only to compulsion, all the benefits of free service, both to the servant and to the master, must be lost.
(Townsend 1786)

The second half of the 18th century saw the final push to strip away small-holdings from the rural poor of Britain, making them entirely dependent on wage-labor for subsistence.

The enclosure of commons had been going on for centuries before 1760, but with nothing like the rapidity with which it has been going on since, it is known that 554,974 acres were enclosed between 1710 and 1760, while nearly 7,000,000 were enclosed between 1760 and 1845.
(Toynbee, 1884)

If the poor were going to eat, they would have to accept wage labor. And the wages they would receive would be those which the market set. Of course, in a labor market flooded by the rural dispossessed, competition for work gave employers an enormous advantage and wages dropped below amounts required for subsistence.

The Speenhamland decrees in the late 18th century allowed employers to pay "market rates" for labor, which soon drove wages below what was necessary to maintain subsistence. Parishes were required to make up the shortfall from their rates. This soon placed parish finances under great strain.

In 1834 the Poor Laws were amended to remove this 'burden' from the parishes, transferring it to the poor. After all, what had they to complain about? All they had to do was 'get a job'. As Andrew Ure insisted in 1835, many workers "pamper themselves into nervous ailments by a diet too rich and exciting for their in-door occupations"!

Don't allow them to organize - it's Bad for Them! Return to Chapter Index

... Before the "strike" of 1836-7, many of [the houses] were tenanted by their owners; but that unfortunate and mistaken attempt to coerce their masters, provoked by some few itinerant demagogues that visited the neighbourhood under the pretence of improving the condition of their occupants, occasioned most of them to change hands, and contributed to reduce those who were in a previous state of prosperity and happiness, to one of dependence, humiliation, and poverty, from which they have never recovered.
(Scriven Report 1842 Point 11)

The workmen... very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the necessary superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing, but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.
(Adam Smith 1776, p. 85)

Confrontations between employers and workers were not new to the 19th century. They had occurred throughout western Europe over more than three hundred years 178. And, because legal force has always favored employers and landowners 179, it was inevitable that throughout the period laws would exist constraining united action on the part of workers.

Adam Smith (1776), in his most famous work, The Wealth of Nations, described the nature of confrontation between workers and employers in the mid 18th century; an astute description which has proved valid over the past two hundred years 180.

In the 19th century and later there would be two quite distinct groups of 'workers'. One group would have its roots in the artisanal groupings of the 18th century and feel a 'natural' connection with their employers. The other group would come from 'The Poor' and bring quite different motivations and understandings with them into the 'workplace'. Both groups would confront employers with their demands, but laws would apply most effectively to the second group, to the 'working poor'.

The anti-combination laws of 1799-1800 most directly addressed the artisanal workers who were already effectively organizing at the start of the 19th century. And it was toward them that many of the restrictions on worker protest activity written into the 'repeal' of those laws during the 1820s would be directed. It would not be until the second half of the 19th century that the second group would begin to have an effective voice in protesting working conditions.

Organizations of Artisans Return to Chapter Index

Christiane Eisenberg provided an account of the emergence of the 'labor aristocracy' of the 18th and 19th centuries,

The guilds split into the wealthy masters' and merchants' Livery Companies (whose functions were soon restricted to sociability) and the Yeomanries of poorer artisans, masters as well as journeymen. Most members of the Yeomanries becoming sooner or later dependent on merchants and other putters-outs, the numbers of self-employed artisans diminished.

In his 1776 Wealth of Nations Adam Smith wrote of twenty men working for wages for every one who was his own master. In a more recent study, this calculation has been confirmed for London, which by the end of the 18th century was by far England's largest center of artisanal production.
(1991 p. 510)

As a consequence of the 18th century Revivals, the lower middle ranking people of Western Europe were reorganized and firmly placed as an urban small-business and artisan 'class', with some of the more ambitious providing the manufacturing elites of the 19th century.

The artisanal groups provided a skilled labor force. They were allied to those whose morality and self-image came out of the 18th century revivals. They were capitalist, not pre-capitalist in orientation 181. They held many of the capitalist understandings of the world and attitudes toward the idle poor even more strongly than the 'old-money' middle ranking people of the time 182.

(27/02/16)

Artisans, employing artisan apprentices of their own, either maintained their own small businesses or became attached to large manufacturing enterprises. As productive enterprises grew in size, many became either sub-contractors to those businesses or became skilled employees. Focusing on Birmingham and Sheffield, Maxine Berg described the scene in the first half of the 19th century:

From the 1820s there was a rise in the size of establishments, the introduction of machinery, and falling apprenticeship and wages. It was in this period that the balance of power shifted away from the skilled artisan to the larger scale unit.

This dramatic break between the large and small producers appeared to prevail in most of the town's industries between 1829 and 1840, whether they were 'traditional', such as tailoring or the leather trades, or new mechanised industries, such as steel-toymaking. The large-scale units dominated the town by 1840, and the small firm depended on the credit and market facilities controlled by the larger ...

Often, independent artisan producers moved by choice into the factory, where by subcontracting they could maintain the viability of their small enterprises
(1993 pp. 19, 21).

In either case, they remained detached from the 'ordinary worker', a distinct group of small-scale capitalists who supported each other and met in their own clubs and institutes183. They increasingly needed to organize to protect their interests and, in the process, became recognized as a radical force within British society.

Inevitably, since through the later 18th and the 19th century they increasingly found themselves working in the same enterprises as the 'working poor', the distinctions between the groups blurred at the boundaries. Some of them, over time, became leaders in Union movements among the 'working poor', a 'labor aristocracy', concerned to improve the lot of less fortunate workers.

However, most remained aloof, a group with their own interests to pursue. As James Jaffe (2000) has described, even now, when unionization is weak, it is as often because workers mistrust unionization as because employers and governments deliberately attempt to prevent workers from collective bargaining.

At the start of the 19th century, articulate workers and trades-people, the artisans of the period, were as suspicious of organizations which focused on the independent rights of the laboring poor as were their employers. This made attempts at worker organization very difficult.

They were motivated by all the moral virtues of the age. They knew the importance of both industry and frugality! Christine Macleod (1999) provided a picture of:

the innovative pursuits of shop-floor inventors in the grimy workshops and factories of Victorian Britain ... It is important to emphasize that we are dealing here with the upper echelons of the working class. The 'working man' that Victorian commentators had in mind was almost certainly 'the respectable artisan',

a member of the lower-middle classes of Victorian Britain. Driven by the entrepreneurial spirit of the 18th century revivals among the 'little gentry', they provided much of the innovative force of the 19th:

It was a commonplace in mid-nineteenth-century Britain that the majority of inventors were working men, and both sides in the 'patent controversy' - reformers and abolitionists - claimed to be acting in the interests of the working-class inventor as they advocated contrary strategies.

'Generally, inventions come from the operatives', Paul Rapsey Hodge, himself an inventor, engineer and patent agent, told a parliamentary select committee in 1851. Isambard Kingdom Brunel concurred, as did patent agent Thomas Webster, who explained that,

In an established manufacture, improvement must consist in small details; the workman is better educated as to, or has more experience of, the wants of the machine than any other person.

The Manchester engineer, William Fairbairn, insisted that in larger mechanical engineering firms it was the 'working partner' (or a foreman or manager) who was responsible for most inventions, 'from his great experience and desire to expedite the work', but then explained that such a man had usually 'been originally a workman, who [had risen] by his industry and careful attention to business'.
(Macleod 1999 p. 19)

Robin Pearson gave a description of some of them in the 19th century,

...the lower middle class, a heterogeneous body of tradesmen and small employers who came to dominate the public life of the industrial suburbs in the mid-Victorian decades ...

In the local press, in almanacs and histories, in lectures at political clubs, school halls and mechanics' institutes, shopkeepers and small employers invoked a community sentiment which was at once radical in its hostility to central authority, and conservative, in that it sought to maintain their hegemony in the out-townships at the expense of a labor solidarity based on class opposition.

The latter was attempted, for instance, via repeated homilies to the worker to accept his lot. Praise for the nobility of work was qualified by strictures on the need for humility and caution, "knowing one's place," both in the sense of loyalty to one's local community, and in the sense of social deference.
(1993, p. 21)

The emerging lower middle classes of Britain felt as threatened (or, perhaps, more threatened because of their own social proximity) by attempts at political organization amongst the recently 'idle poor' as did their social superiors. The 'Working Classes' of Britain were composed of people like those described by Don Herzog:

...workers banded together in clubs, some more formal than others, and met in alehouses to talk about politics. One churchman catalogued the rise of "Revolutionary Clubs" figuring they meant the onset of riots and worse. Other conservatives were unhappy, too, pondering the malignant example of France's Jacobin Clubs.

In 1802, the Leeds Mercury printed a letter musing over such nightly meetings:

Almost every street in a large town has a little senate of this description; and the priviledges of sitting in council over the affaires of the nation, and a pot of porter has long been claimed by free Britons...

(1998 p. 60)

Their experiences during the 18th century had made them suspicious about the moral reliability of those who still held political power and control of most major financial institutions 184. This had left them with a reinforced conviction of the importance of the separation of commerce and politics, and a growing belief in the moral inadequacy of state institutions, including the state church. They were even more dismissive of the poor.

Organizing the 'Working Poor' Return to Chapter Index

In 1834, in response to continued concern among the middle ranks about the laziness, lack of moral fiber and costs of maintaining the 'idle poor', the Poor Laws were amended. As Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1839,

The New Poor-Law is an announcement, sufficiently distinct, that whosoever will not work ought not to live. Can the poor man that is willing to work, always find work, and live by his work?

... A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that Fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.
(Thomas Carlyle, Chartism, 1885 (1839), p. 21)

John Fielden, a member of parliament and, himself, a cotton manufacturer from Lancashire, spoke against the conditions applying to the 'working poor' in 1836:

Here, then, is the "curse" of our factory-system; as improvements in machinery have gone on, the "avarice of masters" has prompted many to exact more labor from their hands than they were fitted by nature to perform, and those who have wished for the hours of labor to be less for all ages than the legislature would even yet sanction, have had no alternative but to conform more or less to the prevailing practice, or abandon the trade altogether.

This has been the case with regard to myself and my partners. We have never worked more than seventy-one hours a week before Sir JOHN HOBHOUSE'S Act was passed. We then came down to sixty-nine; and since Lord ALTHORP's Act was passed, in 1833, we have reduced the time of adults to sixty-seven and a half hours a week, and that of children under thirteen years of age to forty-eight hours in the week, though to do this latter has, I must admit, subjected us to much inconvenience, but the elder hands to more, inasmuch as the relief given to the child is in some measure imposed on the adult.

But the overworking does not apply to children only; the adults are also overworked. The increased speed given to machinery within the last thirty years, has, in very many instances, doubled the labor of both.
(œJohn Fielden, M.P., 1836, pp. 34-35)

The abject poverty and destitution of vast numbers of casual and low paid workers and unemployed people through the 18th and 19th centuries makes any belief in the Summum Bonum 185 consequences of disciplined self-interest seem myopically absurd.

If capitalism flourished and bloomed through this period, it provided little relief for the poor. A few contemporary descriptions of Manchester and similar regions, representative of a much larger body of literature from the period, paint a grim picture:

Alexis de Tocqueville, in the 1830s, described the scene as he approached Manchester:

An undulating plain, or rather a collection of little hills. Below the hills a narrow river (the Irwell), which flows slowly to the Irish sea. Two streams (the Medlock and the Irk) wind through the uneven ground and after a thousand bends, flow into the river. Three canals made by man unite their tranquil lazy waters at the same point. On this watery land, which nature and art have contributed to keep damp, are scattered palaces and hovels.

Everything in the exterior appearance of the city attests the individual powers of man; nothing the directing power of society. At every turn human liberty shows its capricious creative force. There is no trace of the slow continuous action of government. Thirty or forty factories rise on the tops of the hills I have just described. Their six stories tower up; their huge enclosures give notice from afar of the centralisation of industry.

The wretched dwellings of the poor are scattered haphazard around them. Round them stretches land uncultivated but without the charm of rustic nature and still without the amenities of a town ... Some of [the] roads are paved, but most of them are full of ruts and puddles into which foot or carriage wheel sinks deep ...

Heaps of dung, rubble from buildings, putrid, stagnant pools are found here and there amongst the houses and over the bumpy, pitted surfaces of the public places ...

Amid this noisome labyrinth from time to time one is astonished at the sight of fine stone buildings with Corinthian columns ... But who could describe the interiors of those quarters set apart, home of vice and poverty, which surround the huge palaces of industry and clasp them in their hideous folds?

On ground below the level of the river and overshadowed on every side by immense workshops, stretches marshy land which widely spaced muddy ditches can neither drain nor cleanse. Narrow twisting roads lead down to it. They are lined with one-storey houses whose ill-fitting planks and broken windows show them up, even from a distance, as the last refuge a man might find between poverty and death.

Nonetheless the wretched people reduced to living in them can still inspire jealousy of their fellow beings. Below some of their miserable dwellings is a row of cellars to which a sunken corridor leads; twelve to fifteen human beings are crowded pell-mell into each of these damp, repulsive holes.
(œ1958, pp.105-6)

James Kay described an area of Manchester between 1831 and 1844,

The cottages are very small, old and dirty, while the streets are uneven, partly unpaved, not properly drained and full of ruts. Heaps of refuse, offal and sickening filth are everywhere interspersed with pools of stagnant liquid. The atmosphere is polluted by the stench and is darkened by the thick smoke of a dozen factory chimneys.

A horde of ragged women and children swarm about the streets and they are just as dirty as the pigs which wallow happily on the heaps of garbage and in the pools of filth.

In short, this horrid little slum affords as hateful and repulsive a spectacle as the worst courts to be found on the banks of the Irk. The inhabitants live in dilapidated cottages, the windows of which are broken and patched with oilskin. The doors and the door posts are broken and rotten.

The creatures who inhabit these dwellings and even their dark, wet cellars, and who live confined amidst all this filth and foul air-which cannot be dissipated because of the surrounding lofty buildings-must surely have sunk to the lowest level of humanity.

That is the conclusion that surely must be drawn even by any visitor who examines the slum from the outside, without entering any of the dwellings. But his feelings of horror would be intensified if he were to discover that on average 20 people live in each of these little houses, which at the moment consist of 2 rooms, an attic and cellar. One privy - and that usually inaccessible - is shared by about 120 people.

In spite of all the warnings of the doctors and in spite of the alarm caused to the health authorities by the condition of Little Ireland during the cholera epidemic, the condition of this slum is practically the same in this year of grace 1844 as it was in 1831.
(from The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes by James Phillips Kay MD (1844))

Phil Chapple provides a glimpse into conditions in Preston in 1844,

A visitor entering Queen Street, finds himself facing a row of privies of more than 100 yards long. The doors of the privies are about 6 feet from the house doors opposite and the space between one privy and another is filled up with all imaginable and unimaginable filth; so that the street consists of passages little more than 6 feet wide, with dwelling houses on one side and a continuous range of necessaries, pigsties and middens on the other, with a filthy surface drain running along one side ... 12 houses have their only outlets upon this disgusting and pestiferous passage.

The working-class slums of the mid-19th century English industrial town have fascinated and horrified social historians for decades. The example above, from the Reverend J. Clay's report on Preston in 1844, presented a vision of squalor repeated many times over across industrial urban England.

In such environments children were born, lived, played and worked, and for hundreds of thousands life was short and brutal ... While industrialization and urbanization undoubtedly brought about great national wealth, they also produced misery ...
(Chapple 2000, p. 42)

Attempts by the 'working poor' to improve their lot were strongly resisted through both centuries.

In 1835 Andrew Ure examined conditions in factories, with a typical middle ranking understanding of the world in which he lived. As he explained,

It seems established by a body of incontestable evidence, that the wages of our factory work-people, if prudently spent, would enable them to live in a comfortable manner, and decidedly better than formerly, in consequence of the relative diminution in the price of food, fuel, lodgings, and clothing. (p.306)

Earlier in the same publication he described the problem of workers' agitation against their conditions,

The textile manufactures consist of two distinct departments; one carried on by multitudes of small independent machines belonging to the workmen, another carried on by concatenated systems of machinery, the property of the masters ...

The operatives of the latter class are necessarily associated in large bodies, and moreover have no capital sunk in machinery or work-shops. When they choose to strike they can readily join in the blow, and by stopping they suffer merely the loss of wages for the time, while they occasion to their master loss of interest on his sunk capital, his rent, and his taxes, as well as injury to the delicate moving parts of metallic mechanisms by inaction in our humid climate.

There are several cotton-mills in Manchester, of which the interest on sunk capital amounts to from 5,000l. to 10,000l. per annum. If we add to the loss of this interest, that of the profit fairly resulting from the employment of the said capital, we may be able to appreciate in some measure the vast evils which mischievous cabals among the operatives may inflict on mill-owners, as well as on the commerce of the country ...

Proud of the power of malefaction, many of the cotton-spinners, though better paid, as we have shown, than any similar set of artisans in the world, organized the machinery of strikes through all the gradations of their people, terrifying, cajoling the timid or the passive among them to join their vindictive union.

They boasted of possessing a dark tribunal, by the mandates of which they could paralyze every mill whose master did not comply with their wishes, and so bring ruin on the man who had given them profitable employment for many a year. By flattery or intimidation, they levied contributions from their associates in the privileged mills, which they suffered to proceed, in order to furnish spare funds for the maintenance of the idle during the decreed suspension of labor.

In this extraordinary state of things, when the inventive head and the sustaining heart of trade were held in bondage by the unruly lower members, a destructive spirit began to display itself among some partisans of the union. Acts of singular atrocity were committed, sometimes with weapons fit only for demons to wield, such as the corrosive oil of vitriol, dashed in the faces of most meritorious individuals, with the effect of disfiguring their persons, and burning their eyes out of the sockets with dreadful agony.

The true spirit of turn-outs among the spinners is well described in the following statement made on oath to the Factory Commission, by Mr. George Royle Chappel, a manufacturer of Manchester, who employs 274 hands, and two steam-engines of sixty-four horse power.

I have had several turn-outs, and have heard of many more, but never heard of a turn-out for short time. I will relate the circumstances of the last turn-out, which took place on the 16th October, 1830, and continued till the 17th January, 1831. The whole of our spinners, whose average (weekly) wages were 2l. 13s. 5d., turned out at the instigation, as they told us at the time, of the delegates of the union. They said they had no fault to find with their wages, their work, or their masters, but the union obliged them to turn out.

The same week three delegates from the spinners' union waited upon us at our mill, and dictated certain advances in wages, and other regulations, to which, if we would not adhere, they said neither our own spinners nor any other should work for us again! Of course we declined, believing our wages to be ample, and our regulations such as were necessary for the proper conducting of the establishment.

The consequences were, they set watches on every avenue to the mill, night and day, to prevent any fresh hands coming into the mill, an object which they effectually attained, by intimidating some, and promising support to others (whom I got into the mill in a caravan), if they would leave their work. Under these circumstances I could not work the mill, and advertised it for sale, without any applications, and I also tried in vain to let it.

At the end of twenty-three weeks the hands requested to be taken into the mill again on the terms that they had left it, declaring, as they had done at first, that the union alone had forced them to turn out. The names of the delegates that waited on me were, Jonathan Hodgins, Thomas Foster, and Peter Madox, secretary to the union.

(Andrew Ure 1835 pp. 281-4)

Andrew Ure's account of the duplicity and greed of workers in the cotton industry who "pamper themselves into nervous ailments by a diet too rich and exciting for their in-door occupations" is representative of many middle class writings on attempts at unionization by the working poor during the first half of the 19th century. As he continues,

We have seen that the union of operative spinners had, at an early date, denounced their own occupations as being irksome, severe, and unwholesome in an unparalleled degree. Their object in making this misrepresentation was obviously to interest the community in their favor at the period of their lawless strike in the year 1818.

Subsequently to this crisis, some individuals of their governing committee made the notable discovery, that if the quantity of yarn annually spun could by any means be reduced, its scarcity in the market would raise its price, and consequently raise the rate of their wages. They accordingly suggested the shortening of the time of labor to ten hours, as the grand remedy for low wages and hard work; though at this time they were receiving at least three times more wages than hand-loom weavers for the same number of hours' employment, and therefore had very little reason to complain of their lot.

In fact, it was their high wages which enabled them to maintain a stipendiary committee in affluence, and to pamper themselves into nervous ailments by a diet too rich and exciting for their in-door occupations. Had they plainly promulgated their views and claims, they well knew that no attention would have been paid to them, but they artfully introduced the tales of cruelty and oppression to children, as resulting from their own protracted labor, and succeeded by this stratagem to gain many well meaning proselytes to their cause.
(1835, pp. 298-9)

William Booth, a Methodist evangelist, at the end of the 19th century could still say,

Alas, what multitudes there are around us everywhere, many known to my readers personally, and any number who may be known to them by a very short walk from their own dwellings, who are in this very plight!

Their vicious habits and destitute circumstances make it certain that without some kind of extraordinary help, they must hunger and sin, and sin and hunger, until, having multiplied their kind, and filled up the measure of their miseries, the gaunt fingers of death will close upon them and terminate their wretchedness.

And all this will happen this very winter in the midst of the unparalleled wealth, and civilization, and philanthropy of this professedly most Christian land.
(Booth 1890, Preface)

These conditions had first emerged some three hundred years earlier. They had grown steadily worse over two hundred years. Capitalism was built on these foundations 186.

In the second half of the 19th century, with wealth flowing to Britain from its considerable empire, conditions for the poor slowly improved. Robert Steinfeld (2007) has given a succinct explanation of the freedoms won by workers' unions in the 1870s:

the "Employers and Workmen Act," which eliminated criminal penalties for breaches of employment contracts in most cases, and the "Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act," which repealed the Criminal Law Amendment Act, revised the controversial picketing clause, and completely removed trade disputes between employers and workmen from the reach of the common law of criminal conspiracy 187.

While still oppressive, conditions for the 'laboring poor' of Britain were changing for the better. They were rapidly deteriorating for colonial populations.

Conclusion Return to Chapter Index

... If the love of money is the root of all evil, the want of money is the cause of an immensity of evil and trouble. The moment you begin practically to alleviate the miseries of the people, you discover that the eternal want of pence is one of their greatest difficulties.

In my most sanguine moments I have never dreamed of smoothing this difficulty out of the lot of man, but it is surely no unattainable ideal to establish a Poor Man's Bank, which will extend to the lower middle class and the working population the advantages of the credit system, which is the very foundation of our boasted commerce.

It might be better that there should be no such thing as credit, that no one should lend money, and that everyone should be compelled to rely solely upon whatever ready money he may possess from day to day. But if so, let us apply the principle all round; do not let us glory in our world-wide commerce and boast ourselves in our riches, obtained, in so many cases, by the ignoring of this principle.

If it is right for a great merchant to have dealings with his banker, if it is indispensable for the due carrying on of the business of the rich men that they should have at their elbow a credit system which will from time to time accommodate them with needful advances and enable them to stand up against the pressure of sudden demands, which otherwise would wreck them, then surely the case is still stronger for providing a similar resource for the smaller men, the weaker men.

At present Society is organized far too much on the principle of giving to him who hath so that he shall have more abundantly, and taking away from him who hath not even that which he hath.

If we are to really benefit the poor, we can only do so by practical measures. We have merely to look round and see the kind of advantages which wealthy men find indispensable for the due management of their business, and ask ourselves whether poor men cannot be supplied with the same opportunities. The reason why they are not is obvious. To supply the needs of the rich is a means of making yourself rich; to supply the needs of the poor will involve you in trouble so out of proportion to the profit that the game may not be worth the candle.

Men go into banking and other businesses for the sake of obtaining what the American humorist said was the chief end of man in these modern times, namely, "ten per cent." To obtain a ten per cent. what will not men do? They will penetrate the bowels of the earth, explore the depths of the sea, ascend the snow-capped mountain's highest peak, or navigate the air, if they can be guaranteed a ten per cent. I do not venture to suggest that the business of a Poor Man's Bank would yield ten per cent., or even five, but I think it might be made to pay its expenses, and the resulting gain to the community would be enormous.

Ask any merchant in your acquaintance where his business would be if he had no banker, and then, when you have his answer, ask yourself whether it would not be an object worth taking some trouble to secure, to furnish the great mass of our fellow countrymen, on sound business principles with the advantages of the credit system, which is found to work so beneficially for the "well-to-do" few.

Some day I hope the State may be sufficiently enlightened to take up this business itself; at present it is left in the hands of the pawnbroker and the loan agency, and a set of sharks, who cruelly prey upon the interests of the poor.

The establishment of land banks, where the poor man is almost always a peasant, has been one of the features of modern legislation in Russia, Germany, and elsewhere. The institution of a Poor Man's Bank will be, I hope, before long, one of the recognized objects of our own government.
(œWilliam Booth (1890))

William Booth was a Methodist preacher. He would found a movement, The Salvation Army, which still, today, accepts a deep responsibility for providing practical help (in Booth's words, 'soup, soap and salvation') to the poor 188. His practical approach to poverty was based on the tried and true principles of Methodism 189. Their influence on both policies and practice in 'reforming the poor' would lead to the development of 'welfare' programs both by other religious organizations and Western governments. The wastelands of Western Europe and its offspring would slowly but surely be converted into a 'lower middle capitalist class'.

True to the vision of John Wesley, the mission to redeem the lost would not stop with the poor of London, or even of Western Europe. Western Europeans now had vast colonial territories. There was a new wasteland - vast and daunting in its scope - and Western Europeans could not escape their God-given responsibility for reclaiming it, bringing 'soup, soap and salvation' to the lost. The West knew that it was destined to bring 'civilization' and 'development' to the populations of the world.

One could paraphrase the song 'Streets of London', written by Ralph McTell in 1969,

So how can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets
of - any of a thousand slums around the world
I'll show you something to make you change your mind.

End of Chapter

Chapter 6:
Capitalism and Work: the White Man's Burden Return to Index of Chapters

Western people do not work in order to live.
They live to work!

The nigger is a lazy beast and must be compelled to work - compelled by Government - with a stick.
(Sir Rudolph Slatin 190 (in Gilbert Murray œ1900 p. 135))

Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day.

Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price.

In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralising. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work.

There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?
(Russell 1935 pp.16,17)

The White Man's Burden Return to Chapter Index

The 19th century was the century in which unregulated capitalism lay at the heart of most Western European public and private policy and practice. It was the century in which 'The Poor', long a vexing problem for responsible people - and, of course, a source of cheap labor and profit for capitalist enterprise - were taught to work.

By the end of the century, life was slowly improving for Western Europe's poor. But, for the responsible middle classes of Western Europe, the job was far from complete! A new 'Poor' had been found, indigent and slothful, in need of discipline and direction, in the extensive colonies for which they had accepted responsibility.

The next century would be the one in which Western working poor slowly gained legal rights and entitlements, enshrined in labor awards 191. The wealth flowing into Western countries from the rest of the world would bring increasing material prosperity, improved living conditions, healthier diets, and even, for a period, the chance to pursue 'leisure' activities. This would not be true for the inhabitants of Europe's colonial empires.

The 19th was not only the century when The Poor learned to work. It was also the century of Western European colonial expansion. Populations around the world found themselves included, whether they liked it or not, in Western European empires.

A 1990 editorial in The Ecologist provides a bleak picture of a prime purpose of that expansion:

"History", wrote the French philosopher Voltaire, "is a fable upon which we are all agreed". So far as the colonial period goes, the fable would have us believe that the colonial powers were primarily motivated by a desire to bring "progress" and "civilization" to their colonies. Whilst this may indeed have been true of the missionaries who trail-blazed Europe's colonial expansion, it was far from the minds of the main architects of colonial rule.

Contemporary writings... 192 make it clear that for the governments of the day, the principle justification for colonialism was unashamedly economic. Colonies provided the means by which the metropolitan powers could secure access to cheap food, cheap raw materials and labor, new markets for manufactured goods and new investment opportunities. It was as simple as that.
(œEcologist Vol 20 No 6 1990 p. 202)

œHirst, Murray and Hammond (1900) examined the formation of and conduct in British colonies in a book entitled Liberalism and The Empire :

Our colonies, like most other colonies, owe their original existence, in one sense or another, to mere adventure or the power of the sword. They owe their vitality and strength, and most of the finer characteristics which make them almost unique in the history of colonization, to very different causes: to the policy of non-interference, to the studied avoidance of aggression, to toleration and generous amity between conflicting creeds and diverse races, to Liberal principles and Liberal ideas.

...Authority, force, firmness, the detection of offences, the assertion of rightful claims and the punishment of enemies, are, no doubt, principles of great power and value in the world as it now stands; but they are not, and never have been, sufficient alone.

Self-criticism, persuasion, patience, a wise blindness to offences, a reluctance to stand on the outermost edge of every right, the appeasement of enmities, are principles also of great and, one used to hope, of increasing value.

...A fabric of human lives so vast as that for which Her Majesty's Government is now responsible surely demands for its good guidance both high principles and profound prudence.

...There is no sentiment in a nation so dangerous, there is no sentiment so easy to stimulate, as the false excess of patriotism 193.
(1900 Preface pp. v, vi, xi)

Gilbert Murray (1900) in an essay entitled The Exploitation of Inferior Races... provided a summary of common colonial practice toward 'the natives' in British colonial territories,

The 'corvee' or forced labor system, which implied a kind of formal, though very limited, 'slavery', is said to be still practised in some parts of British India, and exists in a very severe form in Natal. In Egypt it was abolished by us some years ago, but seems - though the statement has been denied - to have been reintroduced during the Soudan campaign under irregular and therefore exasperating conditions (Daily News, March 8, 1899).

In the Soudan itself we have, of course, recently proclaimed the formal abolition of slavery. The system we propose to substitute for it has been lucidly described by Sir Rudolph Slatin in an interview which appeared in several newspapers. [For instance, Daily Mail, March 11, 1899. 135]

'The nigger is a lazy beast,' said Slatin, 'and must be compelled to work - compelled by Government.' ' How?' asked his interlocutor. 'With a stick,' was Slatin's reply. Those who have followed the course of Slatin's singular career can perhaps form some notion of the probable weight of that stick!
(œ1900 p. 135)

J. L. Hammond (1900) in an essay entitled Colonial and Foreign Policy, summed up the British attitudes and responsibilities to its empire,

It is the major premiss of the Imperialist argument that British civilization is the best in the world...

The moral hegemony of the world which we have undertaken - we are ready to share it with America when she behaves herself to our satisfaction or when Europe is more than usually insolent - might be expected to imply that our conduct and our influence should act as a beneficent example upon other States. The phrase is that we are the schoolmasters of Europe...

As schoolmasters we are told that we stand outside the discipline of the school. Mr. Bryce has shown that during the negotiations with the Transvaal Government we contrived to provoke war before we had discovered a casus belli 194 .

It is not pretended that these negotiations would have been so conducted if we had been dealing with a Great Power, or, indeed, if we had known the strength of the Transvaal. In other words, we were taking advantage of our physical superiority.

And how is that course of action defended? By reminding ourselves of our missionary character! By recalling all the blessings which the world will reap from the extension of our Empire!
(in Hirst et al (1900) pp. 174-5)

Getting things into Perspective! Return to Chapter Index

Perspective is everything in understanding the real world.

From the Western European perspective, their colonies demonstrated their civilized approach to their responsibilities in life. Francis Hirst (œ1900, p. v) explained why:

They owe their vitality and strength, and most of the finer characteristics which make them almost unique in the history of colonization... to the policy of non-interference, to the studied avoidance of aggression, to toleration and generous amity between conflicting creeds and diverse races...

It all looked very different from the colonial perspective 195.

In a book entitled Path to Nigerian Freedom, Obafemi Awolowo, later to be a prominent Yoruba politician in independent Nigeria, spelled out his view of the nature of the colonial territory known as Nigeria and of the relationship between Nigerians and their colonial masters:

The conquest of one nation by another in an unprovoked act of aggression cannot be justified by any standard of morality. Britain came to Nigeria of her own choosing, and with motives which are only too well known. She sought to impose her rule on the various tribes that inhabited the country in order to attain her own selfish ends.

There was then no question of trusteeship. This was the result of a later compunction of conscience which usually dawns on any evil-doer who is not hardened beyond redemption.

Those tribes with whom she first came into contact resisted the unwarranted attack on their political independence. They were overpowered by force of arms. Thereafter, each tribe was faced with a choice of one of two roads leading to subjection: defeat or surrender...

There are various national or ethnical groups in the country. Ten main groups were recorded during the 1931 census as follows: (1) Hausa, (2) lbo, (3) Yoruba, (4) Fulani, (5) Kanuri, (6) Ibibio, (7) Munshi or Tiv, (8) Edo, (9) Nupe, and (10) Ijaw. According to Nigeria Handbook, 15th edition, 'there are also a great number of other small tribes too numerous to enumerate separately...'

It is a mistake to designate them 'tribes'. Each of them is a nation by itself with many tribes and clans. There is as much difference between them as there is between Germans, English, Russians and Turks for instance. The fact that they have a common overlord does not destroy this fundamental difference...

All these incompatibilities among the various peoples in the country militate against unification.... It is evident from the experiences of other nations that incompatibilities such as we have enumerated are barriers which cannot be overcome by glossing over them.
(Awolowo 1947, pp. 24,48-9)

A passage from a 1924 speech 196 by Prince Marc Kojo Tovalou Houènou, a Dahomeyan (now Benin) who fought for France in the 1st World War, provided a bleak African perspective on the 'colonial experience':

Europe has inaugurated in the Colonies an area of veritable savagery and real barbarism which is carried out with science and premeditation - with all the art and all the refinement of civilization. The unfortunate natives have mingled their destinies with yours...

We understand nothing of the egotistic and barbarous aims sought by certain civilized people who believe that civilization can only reach its zenith by ignoring original laws, and by debasing and enslaving men who have the natural right to live, to evolve, and to attain the full expression of their being...

...The problem arose at the moment of the discovery of America when Europeans intoxicated by glory, adventure, and above all by rapine, sought to conquer new territories which did not belong to them.

They destroyed the aborigines - exterminated them! Then, terrified at the void they had created around them and being themselves incapable of labor, they turned to Africa for workmen. It was Africa that furnished contingents for penal labor - this Africa with whose unhappy history you are unacquainted but which some day, one of her sons will outline for you in darts of fire, - a monument of shame for that civilization of which you boast.

Without humanity there is no civilization!

If the monsters, full of vice, sodden with alcohol, contaminated by disease, whom you send to us, have nothing else to offer than what they have already given us, then keep them yourselves, and let us revert to our misery and our barbarity. The whole fatality that burdens Eschyllian tragedies cannot compare with the blackness of the African tragedy.

Under cover of civilization, men are hunted like deers, plundered, robbed, killed; and these horrors are presented afterwards in eloquent orations as blessings. Hypocrisy and knavery are added to crimes!
(œHouènou (1924) 1979, pp. 228,9)

By the end of the 19th century, Western European nations had divided the world amongst themselves. As Awolowo (1947) claimed of British practice:

Those tribes with whom she first came into contact resisted the unwarranted attack on their political independence. They were overpowered by force of arms. Thereafter, each tribe was faced with a choice of one of two roads leading to subjection: defeat or surrender.

Hillaire Belloc put it well in a poem 197 which celebrated the deployment of the first Vickers machine gun (the Maxim). The British South Africa Company used several of them in what was euphemistically called a 'war' against the Ndebele in Matabeleland (southern Zimbabwe) in November 1893 (Blood was a Maxim gunner's name):

I shall never forget the way
That Blood stood on this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound
Cast his lethargic eye around,
And said beneath his breath;
'Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.'

As a popular British song of the period put it:

Some talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such great names as these.
But of all the world's great heroes,
There's none that can compare
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row,
To the British Grenadier

Millions of people around the world found themselves included within European empires, their lives reorganized to ensure that they, like The Poor of Western Europe in previous centuries, learned to work. There was a great deal to be done, and the responsible people of Western Europe, as 'schoolmasters' to the world, knew that they had a duty to ensure that 'the natives' (the Western colonial term for 'The Poor' of the world) learned to work.

An introduction to the summary of the UNESCO (2002) œInternational Symposium on Post-Development has phrased it well,

By 1914, 84.4 % of the world's terrestrial area had been colonized by the Europeans. With colonization there came a new paradigm of development.

...According to many voices the paradigm of development has not changed. It emerges in new forms, in the current pursuit of neoliberal globalization.

According to François Partant, the French banker-turned-critic of development;

the developed nations have discovered for themselves a new mission - to help the Third World countries advance along the same road to development which is nothing more than the road on which the West had guided the rest of humanity for several centuries.

[Partant, F., La Fin du Developpement, Francois Maspero, Paris, 1982]

As any well enculturated Western European would have told you 198, colonialism, no matter what a few leftist trouble-makers and opportunists might say, was not about 'exploiting' the natives. They were children in need of parental direction, supervision and discipline. In their child-like simplicity they simply did not realize the true potential of the lands within which they lived and their true responsibilities before God. They had been living from hand-to-mouth and had neither the intelligence nor skills needed to realize their own potential.

It was the responsibility of Western Europeans to 'teach them the practice of frugality and industry' which they themselves had learned over four centuries - to 'develop' them 199. At the end of the 19th century, this was Western Europe's inescapable responsibility. It was 'the White Man's burden'.

Rudyard Kipling (1899) 200 explained it:

Take up the White Man's burden -
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild -
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

...To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

...Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden -
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard -
The cry of hosts ye humor
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: -
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

...Take up the White Man's burden -
Have done with childish days -
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
(Rudyard Kipling McClure's Magazine 1899)

They would go where civilized people had never before ventured, assume the heavy duties of parenthood, and shine the light of civilization and the Gospel into the 'spiritual darkness' of 'heathen lands'.

Lowell Mason had expressed it well in a missionary hymn written in 1823,

From Greenland's icy mountains, from India's coral strand;
Where Afric's sunny fountains roll down their golden sand:
From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver their land from error's chain.

What though the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile?
In vain with lavish kindness the gifts of God are strown;
The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.

Shall we, whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high,
Shall we to those benighted the lamp of life deny?
Salvation! O salvation! The joyful sound proclaim,
Till earth's remotest nation has learned Messiah's Name.

Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, and you, ye waters, roll
Till, like a sea of glory, it spreads from pole to pole:
Till o'er our ransomed nature the Lamb for sinners slain,
Redeemer, King, Creator, in bliss returns to reign.

Western Europeans were on a millenarian mission 201. Good would triumph over evil, order over chaos, frugality and industry over improvidence and indolence. Responsible people, whose souls were 'lighted with wisdom from on high', had a duty to those who 'call us to deliver their land from error's chain'. And, a duty to ensure that all was in readiness for the arrival of that millenarian golden age. If this entailed a little harshness, discipline and social disruption, that was unfortunate but necessary!

All schoolmasters knew that true learning requires obedience. As Sir John Eardley Wilmot had explained in the late 18th century,

to break the natural ferocity of human nature, to subdue the passions and to impress the principles of religion and morality, and give habits of obedience and subordination to paternal as well as political authority, is the first object to be attended to by all schoolmasters who know their duty and do it.
(The Gentleman's Magazine (1811) Volume 109 p. 449 (originally in Volume 73 p. 136))

Middle class Western Europeans had learned the lessons of their own history well.

The resolute firmness of the person who acts in this manner, and in order to obtain a great though remote advantage, not only gives up all present pleasures, but endures the greatest labor both of mind and body, necessarily commands our approbation.
(Adam Smith 1759 Part 4 Ch. 2)

The 'Development' Business Return to Chapter Index

'The natives' would never progress or become 'developed' without Western European help. Richard Whateley, Archbishop of Dublin, in 1854, had explained the problem,

Men, left in the lowest, or even anything approaching the lowest, degree of barbarism, in which they can possibly subsist at all, never did, and never can raise themselves, unaided, into a higher condition.
(in Campbell 1871 Pt 1 P.1)

Unless those already enlightened took responsibility for enlightening those who lived in darkness they would continue in ignorance and sloth! Missionary attitudes in central Africa in the 19th century, and on into the 20th, have been summed up neatly by Cairns,

The proper attitude was indicated by Carson of the L. M. S. [London Missionary Society] who, after noting that African men spent 'much time in indolence', remarked that it was inconceivable 'how the practice of that vice in the African race can be supposed to conduce to happiness in them when it makes us so miserable'.
(1965, p. 80)

Western European 'responsible' people of the middle ranks had taught their own poor the evil of sloth and the virtue of work over more than six centuries 202. They brought both the experiences and practices they had acquired in doing so with them as they tackled the problem in their colonies.

As they had determinedly set about teaching the poor to work, they had also taught themselves that work was indispensable to a moral life. The Western European middle classes which took responsibility for reorganizing vast areas of the world during the later 19th and the 20th centuries, were committed to work, for its own sake. It was moral to work and immoral not to do so.

In the words of Adam Smith, asserted by countless other writers of the 17th to 20th centuries (and still being asserted today), the lives of virtuous people would and should demonstrate,

a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry, and application, though directed to no other purpose than the acquisition of fortune.
(1759 Part 4 Ch. 2)

Western middle classes became and have remained convinced that everyone should work for their living and that they have a responsibility to ensure that the indolent do learn to work. To appreciate the driving force of the invasion of the world by Western Europeans over the past two centuries, we need to understand the Western belief in the fundamental importance of work, for its own sake, for its character building potential.

Of course the West invaded (and continues to invade) the world for its resources. Of course the West has profited from its appropriation of the environments of others. But they have done so for the best of all possible reasons.

They were and are in the 'Development' business! 203 In 'developing' the territories of the world, they were enabling the 'development' of their inhabitants. They were bringing order to the chaos of their lives, they were providing them with the opportunity to work. They were in the 'job creation' and 'work training' business!

Russell's observations, with which we started this discussion, highlight the inevitable consequences of human beings building particular understandings into their primary ideologies 204. Work became a form of organization and activity which no longer needed to be 'explained'. To question its importance was either absurd or subversive. To suggest that the working day should be halved, was foolish. To suggest that work was not of equal importance everywhere on earth was equally silly. The reason why the rest of the world was impoverished and 'backward' was that they did not know how to 'put in a full day's work' 205.

Over the past seven hundred years Western individuals and communities have progressively been reorganized and reoriented to what we now know as economic principles and practices 206. People know that the economic presumptions contained within and expressed through the forms of organization within which they are enmeshed are correct, they make intuitive sense 207.

The need for constant expansion of self-interested consumption and accumulation, as evidences of commitment to work, is built into the primary ideologies of Western communities. Western people are not ensnared in the forms of meaning and organization and processes of interaction and activity within which they find themselves. If those forms were not there, they would feel compelled to create them or something very similar to them. Indeed, they have done precisely this through most of the world as they have gained influence in other communities 208.

Although Western people think the principles which underpin the forms of organization and interaction in terms of which they organize their lives, they have not always thought in these ways or organized their lives by the fundamental economic principles which now govern life. The emergence of "modern" ways of thinking and organizing life was slow and painful for most Western Europeans 209 .

The majority of people, during the 16th to early 20th centuries, had to be taught to take these principles seriously, and the disciplines imposed on them by those Western Europeans who gained control of government and who were already thinking in these ways were harsh 210.

Since the basic presumptions and principles of thought of a community determine all the behaviors and interactions of its people, they cannot easily be altered. Attempts at such radical social engineering inevitably disrupt communities and confuse and confound the minds of their members 211. Western Europe did not escape cultural confusion as its cognitive frame changed. As Foucault (1971) described, in Western Europe it produced, over several centuries, a pervasive awareness of uncontrolled madness in the minds of most people.

During the seven centuries it took Western communities to shift from feudalism to modern ways of thinking, the constantly expanding "middle classes" 212 recognized a deep responsibility for re-educating the "lower classes" 213.

The final triumph of modern ways of thinking in Western communities has been heralded over the past 50 years by the progressive disappearance of the "lower classes" as more and more people who come from such backgrounds have begun to think and act in middle class ways 214. With the advent of colonial empires, Western middle classes found themselves with a similar responsibility to 'the natives' of the world.

Of Globalization and 'Failing States' Return to Chapter Index

When human beings are convinced of the rightness of their causes they usually feel a moral responsibility to compel those who don't understand or live by the principles which underpin their lives to conform to them.

We have seen the disastrous consequences of this many times in the 20th and 21st centuries. From Stalin, to Hitler, to Pol Pot, to the ethnic-cleansings of the 1990s, to numerous wars waged by both Western and other communities, human beings have amply demonstrated their insistence that those who are weaker than they should be made to think and live as they do.

Western Europeans have been engaged in such a mission for the past several centuries, and chief amongst their concerns has been the need to convince people everywhere of the importance of work.

Western people are, of course, not the only ones enmeshed in home-grown systems of meaning, organization and interaction. This is the condition of humanity. People, everywhere, organize themselves and their worlds in ways which are consonant with their forms of categorization and classification.

The problem, in trying to understand both ourselves and others, is that, just as the languages of people are historically determined and unique to the communities which speak them, so are the forms of organization and interaction in communities. They are expressions of the underlying principles of categorization and classification which have been historically, and subconsciously, shaped through history 215.

The Decay of Western Influence Return to Chapter Index

Western people know that work is important, and organize their individual lives and their communities in ways which stress and reinforce the importance of the organizational forms and processes of interaction required by work. But, let's not forget that other communities are just as consistent in their thinking, just as certain of the importance of their own understandings of the world, and just as committed to maintaining them through time. And, because these structures and principles are historically, and uniquely determined within communities, it is most unlikely that they will reinforce or give coherence to the Western commitment to work.

People can, of course, be taught the Western understandings, and, while the West is dominant and they need to behave in those ways in order to succeed in that Western dominated world, they will appear to live by those understandings. However, if the influence of the West wanes, so too does the commitment of those people to ordering their lives by Western understandings. Then, they begin, inevitably and less than consciously, to reshape their own behaviors and interactions to fit the unconscious ordering principles of their own communities.

Britain, in the 5th century A.D., provides an excellent historical illustration of this.

By 400 A.D. the Romans had occupied Britain for almost four hundred years 216 and had determinedly set about making it into a Roman Province. As œGildas (c.494 or 516-c.570) says, Britain

was no longer thought to be Britain, but a Roman island; and all their money, whether of copper, gold, or silver, was stamped with Caesar's image.
(Chapter 7)

Yet, on the withdrawal of the Roman legions between 400 and 410 A.D., life rapidly reverted to pre-Roman ways. As œCatherine Hills (1990) says,

around 400 AD Romanists see the end of most of the kinds of information which can be deployed to reconstruct life in Britain for the previous three and a half centuries. Written sources disappeared, and coins, wheel-thrown pottery and masonry building went out of use...

[E]ssentially, from a Romanist's point of view it is obvious that the institutions and way of life of Roman Britain disappeared soon after 400 AD. The absence of 'Roman' kinds of evidence means that we are dealing with a different kind of society, possibly a different kind of people.

Any region which has been subjected to enforced reorganization and commitment to externally imposed understandings of the world will experience a period of turmoil and chaos as those imposed forms become less dominant in the lives of inhabitants.

Britain, in the 5th century, experienced just such turmoil as rival 'kings' battled for ascendancy and neighboring groups, taking advantage of the chaos, invaded the region. Gildas, a century after the exodus of the Roman legions, provided a graphic (if polemically biased) description of the chaos which ensued with the waning of Roman influence in Britain,

...neither to this day are the cities of our country inhabited as before, but being forsaken and overthrown, still lie desolate; our foreign wars having ceased, but our civil troubles still remaining.
(Chapter 26)

As the empires of Western Europe have crumbled, the institutions in their post-colonial territories, established by them to ensure continuity with the colonial past, have become decreasingly effective. The 21st century has produced its own examples of post-colonial territories suffering turmoil and chaos in the increasing numbers of 'fragile' and 'failed' states which are a growing concern for Western people 217.

Many post-colonial territories are in various stages of change. They are slowly, but inevitably, metamorphosing into communities which exhibit similarities with the pre-colonial communities from which they came. Any reassertion of pre-colonial principles of categorization and classification will inevitably be slow and difficult. Over time, forms of organization and interaction will emerge which echo those of the past though they will, of course, not simply replicate past forms.

First, any form which emerges is simply one of a range of possible forms, any or all of which might be generated from the same fundamental categorical principles. So, even if the same principles were in operation one would find different surface forms over time.

Secondly, the principles themselves are not static, they change through time and the forms of interaction and organization which emerge will reflect such changes.

This has been demonstrated time and again in Third World communities as Western influence has become less dominant.

Of course, the longer the period during which a community has been subjected to enforced reorganization to Western understandings of reality, the greater the disruption. It is inevitable that there will be chaos and turmoil as opposing groups attempt to reorder their worlds to their own advantage.

(28/11/16)

As people no longer order their lives by those rational 218 forms of meaning and organization which the West has introduced into their communities, Western people will inevitably feel threatened. They will (and do) consider that they have a responsibility to intervene and re-impose forms of organization which they see as rational and necessary to successful integration into the global economy.

This is particularly true when non-Western people appear to lose their commitment to forms of organization and activity which maximize the possibility and quality of productive employment. Then, Western people know that if they cannot organize themselves to work, it is perfectly acceptable, indeed, necessary, that multi-national enterprises base their productive activities in their communities. This is one of the reasons why Western organizations have argued so strongly for economic globalization over the past thirty years.

(17/01/17) For many people in Third World countries however, globalization seems like a new form of ruthless colonialism, a conspiracy of the rich against the poor and defenceless219. As Marjorie Mbilinyi, author of Big Slavery: The Crisis of Women's Employment and Incomes in Tanzania (1991), claimed:

We could have a lot of despair in Africa right now. Many of us see this as a moment of mass genocide. And it's a very conscious one, we think, on the side of at least some big government actors as well as some of the actors in agencies like the World Bank and the IMF.

The peoples of Africa are being steadily impoverished. They are also being dispossessed of their lands. Governments like Tanzania, partly in response to popular demand, had begun to nationalize assets and try to guide the economy in the direction that would meet the basic needs of the people and increase national control and make it more inward oriented. Now we have complete reversal so that it is almost worse than in the colonial period.
(Mbilinyi 1994)

Fantu Cheru claimed of African experience:

The overwhelming consensus among the poor in Africa today is that development, over the past 25 years, has been an instrument of social control. For these people, development has always meant the progressive modernization of their poverty.

The absence of freedom, the sacrifice of culture, the loss of solidarity and self reliance which I personally observed and experienced in many African countries, including my own, explains why a growing number of poor Africans beg: please do not develop us!
(Cheru 1989, p. 20)

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has summarized investigations into the World Bank's track record in 'helping' 'the poor' most affected by the consequences of its policies, programs and projects in countries around the world. See the ICIJ'sœ Investigative Projects for this and other relevant projects. Its key findings on World Bank activities:

One can but agree with Bill Mitchell's assessment of the true usefulness of anachronous Western institutions which have been adapted to compel nonwestern peoples and communities to conform to Western ideological understandings:

The IMF was created to provide funding support to nations under the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates when their trading accounts endangered their capacity to sustain the agreed parities. After the system collapsed in August 1971 (effectively), the IMF had no further purpose. It reinvented itself as a neo-liberal attack dog on government intervention, and, as such, has no progressive (productive) role to play and should be scrapped. Similarly, the World Bank.

The OECD was created (as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC)) to manage the Marshall Plan funds that Canada and the US provided to reconstruct Europe at the end of World War II. It has similarly outlived its productive purpose and is now a major source of disinformation. Even in the realm of fiction, there are much better fiction writers than exist within the bowels of the OECD in Paris.
(Bil Mitchell, œPoor fiction from the OECD - the organisation should be abolished, Billy Blog, November 28, 2016)

Neoliberal ideologues have proved remarkably adept at seizing anachronous Western institutions and remaking them into neoliberal attack dogs. The IMF, along with the World Bank, are the organizations they subverted to ideogical ends in Third World countries, and, more recently, in the peripheral nations of the European Union.

Western people, however, know that those Western financial and 'development' oriented institutions are not aiding and abetting multi-national enterprises in exploiting resources and cheap labor. They are opposing socialist, dictatorial and anarchic tendencies. They are ensuring that communities are once again guided into market-led economic development. Multinationals are providing much needed capital and expertise which might help to turn those countries once more back to economic prosperity. Not only are they providing some cash inflow to communities, they are, even more importantly, reintroducing them to "work discipline".

Work discipline, titles of consumption and status Return to Chapter Index

(04/04/17) (26/06/17) (22/02/19) (08/10/19) (10/10/19) (24/08/20)

Over seven centuries of teaching themselves and their 'Poor' the importance of work, Western people have built a wide range of presumptions into the concept to buttress its importance. It has become important for its own sake, a form of organization and activity to which all truly moral people commit themselves.

Any suggestion that people should be freed from work to other activity without losing income would be regarded by most Western people as impractical, irresponsible, foolish or subversive. While many people might find Bertrand Russell's vignette with which this discussion started, clever, few would accept that his solution is 'practical'.

A 2019 University of Maryland report has summarized the process by which human beings are, slowly but surely, being herded into new forms of 'work' as artificial intelligence matures and existing 'jobs' are displaced220:

Being able to solve problems and analyze data will not be the keys to your success in the future, says marketing professor Roland Rust at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Artificial intelligence will soon have that covered. If you expect to have a viable career, you better get in touch with your emotions, he says, because the "Feeling Economy" is coming....

"It means that if humans want jobs, they better get good at feeling," Rust says. "Things like interpersonal relationships and emotional intelligence will be much more important." Even though people skills have always been important, what the researchers conclude is that the value of these skills will soon be of unprecedented importance....

"This is something that is going to hit people before they know it," says Rust. "It's already happening. We're already seeing the shift in feeling as being more important, not only in terms of employment growth, but in terms of compensation growth. There is greater compensation growth in feeling than there is in thinking. This is really across the board - you name a job and we can show a shift from thinking to feeling."...

"You certainly don't need to worry about things like multiplication tables," he says. "You can do that on a machine, and everybody's cell phone will do that for them. That kind of skill is just useless."

Rust says we better get used to the idea of AI doing more. He thinks AI will eventually even take over most of the emotional tasks of relating to people. And as AI gets more sophisticated, there's no going back, he says. "The genie is out of the bottle."
(œAnalysis of US labor data suggests 'reskilling' workers for a 'feeling economy', University of Maryland News Release 7 October 2019)

And yet the emphasis on 'work' in the capitalist world has not diminished. People, in a globalized capitalist world, must still 'work for a living' in a world fast moving toward 'share the scraps' job markets.

Marshall Auerback, writing on American Compass (a conservative 'think tank' which 'promotes a distinctly conservative approach to economics'), has described what has happened in the 21st century:

The tech industry buzzword "gig" has distracted society from important questions about the gig economy that are surprisingly traditional: whether a business has employees or contractors, and how it can avoid payroll taxes and legal liability. Countless Silicon Valley business models have been built under the guise of gigs, Uber and Lyft two of the best-known cases, which is ironic considering that for all of their high-tech pretensions, at the core both are taxi and food delivery services. But with state governments like California facing increasing revenue shortfalls and an estimated 57 million gig workers in the United States noting a lack of employer protections and fair wages, the matter has shifted to the courts.

...In a genuinely independent contractor relationship, the quid pro quo is higher pay as an offset to the lack of paid benefits. But companies in the gig economy generally don't operate this way: Uber and Lyft pay minimum wages that in many instances compel employees to work 70-80 hours per week to make a living. That considerably impinges on the contractor's supposed work-time flexibility, as well as rendering it virtually impossible to afford decent benefits, such as adequate health insurance, let alone sick pay or vacation leave. In the words of a recent report of the National Labor Relations Board's Office of the General Counsel (NLRB GC), "Uber drivers - who earn about $9-$10 an hour - can't expand revenues because they can't control prices or expand their customer base - the only thing they can do is drive more hours." In the words of a recent report of the National Labor Relations Board's Office of the General Counsel (NLRB GC), "Uber drivers - who earn about $9-$10 an hour - can't expand revenues because they can't control prices or expand their customer base - the only thing they can do is drive more hours."...

...While they are called "independent contractors," their independence is illusory because the so-called "entrepreneurs" in reality "do not even have basic control over how they deliver rides... [and] are 'supervised' by semi-automated and algorithmic systems that track their acceptance rates, time on trips, speed, customer ratings, and other factors, and drivers can be 'deactivated' based on these factors." That's not a co-equal work relationship between an employer and an independent contractor; it's more a form of indentured servitude facilitated by 21st century surveillance technology.
(Marshall Auerback, œThe Gig Economy Is Paving the Road to Serfdom, American Compass, The Commons, Aug 23, 2020)

The Computer Revolution Return to Chapter Index

(01/05/17) (25/02/19)

This has never been better demonstrated than in the Western response to the computer revolution. During the 1960s Western people first became aware of the transforming possibilities of the computer revolution which was looming on the horizon.

A report from a specialist committee to President Lyndon Johnson of the USA in 1964 examined the issue and made a number of recommendations. They were summarized by Macbride in 1967:

Distribution of titles of consumption (i.e., money) has been via jobs... this will have to end. The continuance of the income-through-jobs link as the only major mechanism for distributing effective demand - for granting the right to consume - now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system.

Further, up to this time resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings.
(Macbride (1967, p. 195); see œAD Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution (1964) 221)

Numerous articles were written in newspapers and magazines speculating on how people would fill in their time when robots and other computer based technologies made their lives easier and freed human beings to leisure activity. And, equally, speculation was rife as to "how to distribute the abundance that is the great potential of cybernation" when consumption was no longer tied to work.

How would we distribute income to people when machines were doing the producing and money had become simply a means to obtain goods and services produced by them, with the "income-through-jobs link" broken?

Of course, there seems no logical reason why, if we invent machines to do our work for us, we should not reward ourselves by gaining increased leisure time and by distributing the means for obtaining the goods and services produced in some other way than as rewards for work. The reality, however, has been very different from the speculated futures of those articles222.

Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo have addressed the likely impact of the robotization of industry on the jobs and incomes of people in industrialized countries in the 21st century, with a special focus on the United States. They have summarized their findings:

As robots and other computer-assisted technologies take over tasks previously performed by labor, there is increasing concern about the future of jobs and wages. We analyze the effect of the increase in industrial robot usage between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets. Using a model in which robots compete against human labor in the production of different tasks, we show that robots may reduce employment and wages... [W]e estimate large and robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages across commuting zones.
(Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo, œRobots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets, NBER Working Paper 23285, March 2017)

What is seldom addressed is the inevitable consequence of the post 1970s 'off-shoring' of labor-intensive industry. The jobs most likely to be amenable to automation are also those jobs which have, over the past fifty years, been relocated to take advantage of weak legislative protections, low (or non-existent) taxation regimes and low-cost labor in free trade zones, maquiladoras and export processing zones - wherever labor is cheap and regulation relaxed or non-existent.

The low-hanging fruit of readily automatable industry in Western regions has largely already been exploited. Many of the remaining jobs, increasingly in service industries, are less susceptible to robotization (at least in the near-term).

In January 2017, James Manyika (et al) produced a report entitled A Future that Works: Automation, Employment, and Productivity. As they summarized:

We are living in a new automation age in which robots and computers can not only perform a range of routine physical work activities better and more cheaply than humans, but are also increasingly capable of accomplishing activities that include cognitive capabilities. These include making tacit judgments, sensing emotion, or even driving - activities that used to be considered too difficult to automate successfully.

The automation of activities can enable productivity growth and other benefits at both the level of individual process and businesses, as well as at the level of entire economies, where productivity acceleration is sorely needed, especially as the share of the working-age population declines in many countries. At a microeconomic level, businesses everywhere will have an opportunity to capture benefits and achieve competitive advantage from automation technologies, not just from labor cost reductions, but also from performance benefits such as increased throughput, higher quality, and decreased downtime. At a macroeconomic level, based on our scenario modeling, we estimate automation could raise productivity growth on a global basis by as much as 0.8 to 1.4 percent annually.

In a summary map they provide an estimate of the technical automation potential of the global economy


(James Manyika, Michael Chui et al, œA Future that Works: Automation, Employment, and Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute, January 2017, Pp. 4, 15)

Life Beyond 'Work': What fate awaits human beings and their societies? Return to Chapter Index

(04/03/23)

All this underscores the importance of challenging the increasingly myopic Western capitalist definition of human beings as a 'workforce' and 'consumer base'. It really is important to reconstitute the Commons.

Kai-fu Lee has cogently explained where 21st century developments in 'artificial intelligence' are taking the capitalist world. As he asks: 'What is to be done?'.

...A.I. products that now exist are improving faster than most people realize and promise to radically transform our world, not always for the better. They are only tools, not a competing form of intelligence. But they will reshape what work means and how wealth is created, leading to unprecedented economic inequalities and even altering the global balance of power.

It is imperative that we turn our attention to these imminent challenges...

Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the computer revolution, the A.I. revolution is not taking certain jobs (artisans, personal assistants who use paper and typewriters) and replacing them with other jobs (assembly-line workers, personal assistants conversant with computers). Instead, it is poised to bring about a wide-scale decimation of jobs - mostly lower-paying jobs, but some higher-paying ones, too.

This transformation will result in enormous profits for the companies that develop A.I., as well as for the companies that adopt it...

We are thus facing two developments that do not sit easily together: enormous wealth concentrated in relatively few hands and enormous numbers of people out of work. What is to be done?
(Kai-fu Lee, œThe Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence, New York Times, SundayReview | Opinion, June 24, 2017)

The world is facing a future of enormous wealth concentrated in relatively few hands and enormous numbers of people out of work. What is to be done?

The author's possible solutions need to be compared with the conclusion reached in that 1964 report to President Lyndon Johnson of the USA:

Distribution of titles of consumption (i.e., money) has been via jobs... this will have to end. The continuance of the income-through-jobs link as the only major mechanism for distributing effective demand - for granting the right to consume - now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system.

In a truly intelligent, empathic world, there would be no debate.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that we are witnessing an unstoppable computerized displacement of increasing numbers of 'gainfully employed' human beings. The future is likely to be either the one envisaged in that 1964 report: a world where human beings are no longer seen as capitalism's 'workforce'; or one in which human beings increasingly live in a "share-the-scraps" economy; as David Graeber expressed it: a world of "bullshit jobs".

But this is not how it should all end! We are - or at least I've been led to believe that we are = an intelligent species. It is inevitable that we will find ways of minimizing the effort needed to supply the needs of life.

The challenge is how, in an industrialized, capitalist society, to ensure the livelihoods and meaningful existence of all its members. That is, how can we distribute 'titles of consumption' (i.e., money) in ways other than through 'work'? And, how can we prepare communities of human beings for life after 'work'?

The answers are obvious but have been obscured by those who have benefitted most from an outdated and injurious system of wealth distribution and human 'employment'.

Let's move on to the new reality - that the age of 'jobs' and 'work' requiring the organized use of human 'labor' is thankfully ending. We are not there yet but, with the necessity of limiting consumption in an age when automation has rapidly increased productive output, it is time for a new understanding of what life is all about.

We already have all the infrastructural means needed to enable the distribution of income and goods and services to people without requiring them to 'turn up for work'. What we are increasingly desperately needing is an alternative understanding of the meaning and purpose of life.

The survival of our species depends, quite literally, on confronting and resolving this challenge.

Lant Pritchett, in an essay entitled 'People Over Robots: The Global Economy Needs Immigration Before Automation', has offered a 'solution' which would perpetuate the present organization of capitalist societies:

We live in a technological age - or so we are told. Machines promise to transform every facet of human life: robots will staff factory floors, driverless cars will rule the road, and artificial intelligence will govern weapons systems. Politicians and analysts fret over the consequences of such advances, worrying about the damage that will be done to industries and individuals. Governments, they argue, must help manage the costs of progress. These conversations almost always treat technological change as something to be adapted to, as if it were a force of nature, barreling inexorably into the staid conventions and assumptions of modern life. The pace of change seems irrepressible; new technologies will remake societies. All people can do is figure out how best to cope.

Nowhere is this outlook more apparent than in the discussion of automation and its impact on jobs. My local grocery store in rural Utah has hung, with no apparent sense of irony, a sign proclaiming the company's support for U.S. workers above a self-checkout machine, a device that uses technology to replace the labor of an employee with the labor of the customer. Much ink has been spilled in explaining how automation threatens some low-skilled workers and what governments should do to help: for instance, countries could support retraining initiatives, revamp education systems, or invest in redistributive schemes. At the same time, many governments hope that machines can save their economies from the consequences of demographic decline and aging. Techno-optimists argue that the United States and many other wealthy countries need automation to make up for dwindling working-age populations and looming gaps in workforces. Happily, they suggest, the advance of technology will sweep aside the troubles of demography.

But these debates and arguments miss a very simple point. As seismic as it may seem, technological change is not a natural force but the work of human beings. Of course, technology has radically improved human lives: no one wants to live without electricity, flush toilets, or (in Utah) central heating. In other cases, however, it is new policies, and not new technologies, that societies need most....
(Lant Pritchett, œPeople Over Robots: The Global Economy Needs Immigration Before Automation, Foreign Affairs, February 28, 2023)

But, of course, that answer is no answer! It is the equivalent of poor Hans's attempt to avoid dyke collapse by sticking his finger into the developing breach.

We should embrace and harness the new technological possibilities. They should become the blessed inheritance of humanity not the means for the enslavement of most to the dubious 'benefit' of a few.

Both 'money' - titles of consumption - and human technologies are human inventions. Let's harness both to the benefit of all!

As we explore what has happened over the past century we should be constantly asking ourselves:

Is there a better way to distribute income and supply human needs than condemning humanity to endless 'work', 'poverty' and exploitation?

That is one of the most important challenges that confront us in this crisis -filled 21st century!

Globalization, Free Trade Zones and Definitions of Employment Return to Chapter Index

(17/07/18)

In the 21st century people either work for longer hours, with more demanding pressures, or find themselves, involuntarily, committed to casual and part-time work or to unemployment queues. And the incomes of people are, if anything, more closely tied to work than they were forty years ago. Business taxes, duties, tariffs and other forms of public impost on economic activity have been reduced to ensure the continued competitiveness of industry. And government services and welfare payments have correspondingly been cut back 223 - often because it has been claimed that they 'reward improvidence' 224.

Through the rest of the world over the past thirty years, the globalization of productive enterprise has resulted in the reorganization of entire populations to provide low paid labor for export goods.

For graphic illustration of this, see Michael Zhang, Apr 05, 2013,
œEye-Popping Photographs of Hong Kong High-Rise Apartment Buildings

High-rise apartment buildings in Hong Kong - every window represents a family (or more).
(Each window represents a family (or more))

See Bettina Wassener and Grace Tsoi, œHave-Nots Squeezed and Stacked in Hong Kong (New York Times, September 27, 2013) for a depressing description of what happens when hyperglobalization makes workers 'redundant'. At what point does the relocation of production to regions where the costs of production are lowest; coupled with callous disregard of those disenfranchised and discarded, morph into ill-disguised slavery and crimes against humanity (the œRome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines these as: "... particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of human beings.")?

Raveena Aulakh provides a damning assessment of conditions in a Bangladesh factory:

A Bangladesh factory that sews garments for The Gap and Old Navy brands routinely forces workers to work over 100 hours a week and they are slapped, shoved and punched, says a damning report.

It also says workers live in penury, earning 20 to 24 cents an hour, and illegal firings are regular.

The report titled "Gap and Old Navy in Bangladesh: cheating the poorest workers in the world" was released Thursday by Pittsburgh-based Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.

Charles Kernaghan, director of the institute, said in the report "these abuses have been going on for more than two and a half years."
(Raveena Aulakh/Torstar News Service, œBangladesh factory that sews garments for The Gap and Old Navy accused of abusing workers, Cambridge Times (Canada), Oct 04, 2013;
œBangladesh factory which collapsed in April, 2013.
see also, this Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights summary: œTwo Excellent Articles Expose Gap in Bangladesh; Stephanie Clifford and Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, September 1, 2013, œFast and Flawed Inspections of Factories Abroad)

From the mid 1970s, transnational companies increasingly began to locate their low-wage production activities in selected Third World countries, taking advantage of new transport developments, particularly the development of container shipping which transformed Western waterfronts during the 1970s.

Those who were most directly involved in Third World development planning and programs saw this new movement to produce low-wage goods in Third World countries as providing a new base for national development in those countries. With the failure of import substitution industrialization, and the faltering of value-added industrial development 225, this new move by transnational companies to relocate in Third World countries was seen as a 'window of opportunity' for Third World people.

Where government-directed planning had not succeeded, private investment from Western countries would. Development agencies, therefore, strongly promoted various forms of deregulation to facilitate transnational investment in the Third World.

The result, for Western populations, was a transient affluence as goods made in non-Western sweat-shops flooded Western supermarkets and malls. It also resulted in increasing unemployment among low-skilled workers. This last effect was rapidly disguised, in Western nations, by altering the definition of employment to include all people who 'did any work at all for pay or profit'. The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the current definition of employment,

...people are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey week. This includes all part-time and temporary work, as well as regular full-time, year-round employment.
(œUSBLS 2010)

Even one hour of paid work in a week now qualifies an individual for definition as 'employed'. The definition has been completely divorced from any consideration of a 'living income'. The relation between 'employment statistics' and living standards has been broken, allowing for the disguised growth of a low paid, marginalized workforce in Western countries 226.

A EurekAlert summary of a report by Lambert, Henly and Haley-Lock (2010) entitled Managers' Strategies for Balancing Business Requirements with Employees' Needs, provides a glimpse into the situation in 2010,

The United States workforce, battered by an economic slowdown, now includes a record number of workers who are involuntarily working part-time due to reduced hours or the inability to find a full-time job.... Hourly workers - the majority of the wage and salary workforce - are especially susceptible to reduced, irregular and fluctuating hours, and the myriad of challenges associated with them....

The Census Bureau uses the term for those who work less than 35 hours a week because they could not find a full-time job or those who work reduced hours due to "slack demand." In November 2009, 9.2 million workers fell in this category, the highest level in recorded history.

Other recessions also have seen an increase in involuntary part-time workers, she said. For example, the labor market added 1.5 million involuntary part-time workers between 1981 and 1982 for a total of 6.8 million workers, surging up again to add 2.3 million between 1992 and 1993 for a total of 6.7 million workers.

"I think it is important to underscore that employment has become increasingly precarious over the past 30 years, not just during recessionary periods, due to structural changes in the economy, reductions in labor protections and evolving employer practices that pass risk from the market onto workers," Lambert said. "The current recession highlights these insecurities, bringing much-needed attention to the plight of disadvantaged workers who are struggling to keep their jobs as well as maintain sufficient hours to make ends meet.

The problems faced by hourly, low-level workers are unlikely to go away when the economy fully recovers."

In good times and bad, employers frequently use "just-in-time" scheduling practices - setting hourly workers' schedules with limited advance notice to accommodate fluctuating demand - as a means of maintaining a tight link between labor costs and demand.

Unpredictable schedules not only make it harder for workers to determine their incomes, they also make it hard to plan for childcare and family life, Henly said.

"Unpredictable work schedules can translate into instability in family routines and practices, placing additional burdens on already strapped and busy families, their caregivers and extended family members," she said.
(œEurekAlert 31 Aug. 2010 'Hourly workforce carries burden during recession' 227)

Across the Western world, the consequences of low wage competition from Third World nations, coupled with increased emphasis on migration into Western countries from depressed regions of the world have become endemic. Work conditions for low-skilled Western workers have continued to deteriorate.

Andrew Crane et al, in a study entitled 'Innovations in the Business Models of Modern Slavery: The Dark Side of Business Model Innovation', describe conditions in the United Kingdom in the second decade of the 21st century. Forms of 'debt bondage', peonage and indenture have evolved in this 21st century to invisibly blend into 21st century employment practices:

People trapped in modern slavery can be 'underworked' by ruthless employers, to increase their debt bondage and provide revenue from living costs.

The assumption that victims of exploitation are worked like 'slaves' is shielding extra layers of exploitation, shows research led by the University of Bath's School of Management, published by the Academy of Management.

The study of the food and construction sectors in the UK found that far from being worked as hard as they can, victims can sometimes be given no work for several weeks, or only a few hours a week.

Gangmasters take on more workers than they need and deliberately avoid giving victims work. They provide them with accommodation and money for food, on the proviso it is paid back when they start earning; cultivating dependence and debt bondage, most common among migrant workers in the agricultural sector.

Victims become 'coerced consumers', forced into spending wages on accommodation, food, transport and other goods provided by their employer. They are driven deeper into debt, securing funds from family members abroad, or instant loan services.

In other cases, workers will accumulate large amounts of debt, usually with undisclosed premium interest rates, that they cannot repay. They are pushed further into financial dependence and become increasingly susceptible to continued exploitation.
('œUnderworked' victims of modern slavery endure extra exploitation, EurekAlert Summary, Public Release: 16-Jul-2018)228

In Third World countries, a variety of 'free trade zones' were established as governments competed to attract transnational companies 229.

From the late 1970s, Western governments, seeking ways in which to stimulate their own faltering trade 230, lowered tariff barriers to selected Third World countries. However, the consequences have been rather different than initially anticipated by the experts 231.

(16/04/17)

So, what has gone wrong? Why have not new technologies, which have, unarguably, enabled more efficient and less labor intensive production, enriched human beings everywhere and freed them to non-work activity? In order to understand why, in a climate which should have led to shorter working hours and increasing material prosperity, people have found themselves working harder and for longer, amongst other things 232, we need to understand the peculiar nature of work in Western communities.

Distinction between Labor and work Return to Chapter Index

Through the past seven centuries Western people have evolved a very distinctive and peculiar understanding of the nature of work 233, which necessitates making a clear distinction between the terms labor and work.

The term labor, for our purposes, will refer to any activity which includes expenditure of physical or mental effort especially when difficult or compulsory. It is normally defined as human activity that provides goods or services.

Work, on the other hand, cannot be so simply defined since it not only includes labor but a variety of moral presumptions about the nature of labor.

The following discussion of work, for reasons which we have already spelt out, relates only to understandings in Western communities. Nothing we are talking of can simply be translated to "human beings" at large. They are culturally specific understandings which reflect the peculiar history of Western communities over the past several centuries.

The term work, as we will define it, includes the services performed by workers for an income since one of the important reasons given by people who are asked why they work is that without work they would not be "able to afford to live". As Macbride (1967 p.195) put it, "Distribution of titles of consumption (i.e., money) has been via jobs" 234.

But it does not only refer to activity which generates an income. It is also, and perhaps far more importantly, the term we use to imply that an object is performing as it was meant to perform 235 . So, we are able to ask "is it working?", and the person to whom we are speaking knows that in order to answer the question he or she must check its performance and that performance should be judged against the potential of the item.

There is a teleological dimension to the term. 'Work' is understood, in a less than conscious way amongst most Western people, to be directed toward an end or shaped by a purpose, primarily related to individuals achieving their potential. People ought to work.

This understanding of the meaning of work implies that objects, or people, have been designed to perform in certain ways. When they are performing as they have been designed to, they are working. When they are doing something other than what they have been designed to do, they are not working or they are disabled.

The Able-bodied and the Disabled - The Deserving Poor Return to Chapter Index

During the 17th to 19th centuries in Western Europe, there emerged a clear division between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor. Those who were undeserving were those who, while "able-bodied", yet were not employed and/or relied on welfare support to one extent or another for subsistence. The deserving poor were those who could not help being unemployed. The largest category of these were people who were classified as in some way "disabled" as a consequence of some physical imperfection or other which interfered with their ability to be employed.

During the 17thand 18thcenturies, as Mackelprang and Salsgiver (1996) explained, it was assumed that it was the responsibility of the community to repair these imperfections so as to ensure that such people could engage in work.

In the United States, institutions dedicated to perfecting the imperfect sprang up (Rothman, 1971) with the hope that professional intervention could cure these inadequacies. When a cure was not possible, people with disabilities could at least be trained to become functional enough to "perform socially or vocationally in an acceptable manner"
(Longmore, 1987b, p. 355).

Over the past two centuries, Western communities have identified a variety of "disabled" people. Into this residual category are placed any who are, in any way, "deficient". The range of people placed into this category is remarkably wide, including those who are mentally retarded or otherwise mentally 'impaired', blind, deaf, lame, exhibiting some other form of physical abnormality or 'deformity', or suffering from any of a variety of long-term illnesses.

Even today, the term "disabled" is applied to any who are in any way "impaired" and are therefore "dependent". This is exemplified in the acts passed in most Western countries over the past fifty years, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (1992) which guaranteed to the physically or mentally impaired protection against discrimination (see Anderson 1992). This category includes not only those with physical or mental problems, but also many whose "impairment" is social in nature.

But for the need to be able to perform at "work" and so ensure their "independence" 236, there could be little reason for the existence of such a widely inclusive category of people. These are the "dependent" ones, those who must be "cared for".

During the 19th century Western communities developed quite specific programs for dealing with these "unrepairable" people. Such people were concluded to be permanent "dependents" who should be cared for by the community but were, nonetheless, a drain on its resources. It was believed that they should, to a large extent, be separated from the rest of the community lest others become in some way contaminated.

Professionals lost confidence in their ability to perfect people with disabilities, concluding that they were innately unproductive and thus endemically without worth. No intervention could bring about change because the laws of nature deemed people with disabilities unfit (Longmore, 1987a).

People with disabilities were to be prevented from marrying or having children for fear of propagating their imperfections.

As the 19th century progressed, institutions to deal with the threat and nuisance of people with disabilities increased dramatically, and they were increasingly isolated and institutionalized, sometimes in sub-human conditions.
(Mackelprang and Salsgiver (1996))

Work and its antonyms Return to Chapter Index

For those who are not "handicapped" or "disabled", there are two contrasting states to work in Western communities. The first is usually termed unemployment, this is, as most dictionaries define the term, "a period of involuntary idleness ". It is during periods of un employment that people are paid "the dole". Synonyms of the term include: alms, charity, gratuity, handout, mite, pittance, trifle. Being unemployed is assumed to be related to misfortune and heartache, to living from hand-to-mouth.

The unemployed person is being denied the opportunity to work, and there is something morally wrong with a person who accepts this situation with equanimity. People who are not given the chance to work should feel a sense of adversity, of affliction, of being judged as good-for-nothing and worthless. Those who lose their jobs are said to have been declared redundant.

Work and leisure Return to Chapter Index

(04/08/19) (11/08/19) (26/11/19)

While Western people assume the right to 'leisure time', this is not a right which even in the 21st century is universally recognized or honored. The 'forty hour week' was something which Western working people gained only after prolonged, organized protest. It was only in the 1930s that legal acceptance of the principle of a forty hour week was finally won in Western nations. It never has been in most Third World nations. Paid annual leave was also first included in Western industrial awards during the 1930s (though usually only one week).

It was during the boom years following the Second World War that both the forty hour week and annual leave became accepted as basic entitlements in Western industrial labor awards. The effective period during which 'leisure' has been available to the bulk of Western working people has been less than sixty years.

During the discussion on 'leisure' which follows we need to realize how long it took to have such time recognized as legitimate and for how short a time it has been a 'basic entitlement' for Western workers.

While most Western people over the past fifty years have assumed the right to limited working hours and paid annual leave, the entitlements have always been questioned by employers and are by no means ensured into the future. Since the 1970s, low paid workers have found their entitlements slowly whittled away. Many need to juggle more than one job in order to 'make ends meet'. 237

Worker benefits, hard-won through the New Deal's reinvigoration of labors' rights of workplace organization in the United States, have been seriously eroded in the post-1970s period. What started out as a move of low-skilled labor from Western to Third World nations, has grown into concerted campaigns to strip worker entitlements and benefits from US employees in order to ensure employers a 'level playing field' in a globalizing capitalist world.

Steven Greenhouse has described the 2019 consequences:

The United States is the only advanced industrial nation that doesn't have national laws guaranteeing paid maternity leave. It is also the only advanced economy that doesn't guarantee workers any vacation, paid or unpaid, and the only highly developed country (other than South Korea) that doesn't guarantee paid sick days. In contrast, the European Union's 28 nations guarantee workers at least four weeks' paid vacation.

Among the three dozen industrial countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has the lowest minimum wage as a percentage of the median wage - just 34 percent of the typical wage, compared with 62 percent in France and 54 percent in Britain. It also has the second-highest percentage of low-wage workers among that group, exceeded only by Latvia.

All this means the United States suffers from what I call "anti-worker exceptionalism."

... Labor unions are weaker in the United States than in other industrial nations. Just one in 16 private-sector American workers is in a union, largely because corporations are so adept and aggressive at beating back unionization. In no other industrial nation do corporations fight so hard to keep out unions.

The consequences are enormous, not only for wages and income inequality, but also for our politics and policymaking and for the many Americans who are mistreated at work.
(Steven Greenhouse, œYes, America Is Rigged Against Workers: No other industrial country treats its working class so badly. And there's one big reason for that, New York Times, August 3, 2019)

In 2019, the assault on both US and other Western workers has intensified as the lower 60% of workers: the precariously employed, 'gig' and other 'contract' populations, struggle to keep their heads above water. Bama Athreya has neatly summarized the direction in which worker exploitation has gone over several decades:

...[W]e're seeing major global policy institutions divert attention from the corporate-led globalization that's eroded working conditions everywhere. Instead, they're suggesting that somehow it's the robots' fault. Technology is a problem for labor rights - but not in the way many people think. The debate over robots taking our jobs is divorced from the reality of extreme capital concentration in the digital economy - which is far more responsible for eroding workers' rights.

Capital concentration globally has vastly exceeded the levels we were protesting in the late 1990s. A select few tech companies dominate the entire globe, and their CEOs are among the richest men the world has ever known. Many of their enterprises are virtual, allowing them to elude responsibility for everything from taxes to workplace conditions.

Companies like Uber and Amazon's Mechanical Turk claim that they are neither employers nor service providers but merely intermediaries, matching clients who desire services with contractors to provide said service. But the platforms these companies run use algorithms to fragment work and pit workers against one another in new ways, forcing them to bargain against one another for gigs in a new, digitally-enhanced race to the bottom. From pedicab drivers in Cambodia to domestic workers in Tanzania, people around the world are learning that the only means to another gig is through an app. Even editing and design work are being offshored, and then 'optimized,' through unaccountable digital brokers like Rev and Upwork.

Journalist Steven Hill revealed the extent of this problem in Raw Deal, his expose on the industry. "In the name of hyper (market) efficiency, suddenly the 'extraneous' parts of a worker's day are being eliminated," Hill wrote. "Micro-gigs with job brokerages like TaskRabbit and Elance-Upwork are reducing workers' value to only those exact minutes someone is raking the leaves, or on the computer, or banging the nails or mopping the floor, or engaged in a specific task, toiling away and producing."

The digital economy also enables platform companies and their clients to amass incredible amounts of individual data about their workers. This can be used for "algorithmic management" - a euphemism for the use of artificial intelligence for data collection and continuous surveillance of workers. Algorithmic management, as a recent report from Data & Society notes, enables platforms to control ever more fragmented bits of a worker's time, agency and labor. Companies can use behavioral "nudges" to incentivize workers to work harder, faster, or provide labor on demand at all hours.

Penalties are also part of the machine learning. Workers that choose not to accept certain jobs for on-demand delivery, domestic or ride-hailing services can be penalized by being put in "time out" or even "deactivated," or banned from the platform, the Data & Society report finds. This fear of deactivation can coerce workers to accept undesirable gigs and hours.

And then there are the out and out ways in which platforms incentivize clients and workers to break labor laws....
(Bama Athreya, œTwenty Years After Seattle, Is There a New Race to the Bottom?, Inequality, November 25, 2019)

As Nicholas Kristof has belatedly recognized,

...The relentless assault on labor has gained ground partly because, over the last half-century, many Americans - me included - became too disdainful of unions. It was common to scorn union leaders as corrupt Luddites who used ridiculous work rules to block modernization and undermine America's economic competitiveness....

...[I]t's now clear that the collapse of unions - the share of employees belonging to unions has plunged to 10 percent in 2018 from 35 percent in the mid-1950s - has been accompanied by a rise of unchecked corporate power, a surge in income inequality and a decline in the well-being of working Americans.

For all their shortcomings, unions midwifed the birth of the middle class in the United States. The period of greatest union strength from the late 1940s through the 1950s was the time when economic growth was particularly robust and broadly shared. Most studies find that at least one-fifth of the rise in income inequality in the United States is attributable to the decline of labor unions.

Unions were also a formidable political force, and it's perhaps not a surprise that their enfeebling has been accompanied by a rise in far-right policies that subsidize the wealthy, punish the working poor and exacerbate the income gap.
(Nicholas Kristof, œTrump Finds a Brawler for His War on Workers: America's working class is in desperate shape, and its longtime protectors - unions - have lost much of their power, New York Times, Opinion, August 10, 2019)

In Third World countries, with labor organization weak or non-existent, it is not uncommon for workers to be employed for six days a week and ten hours a day. This, of course, leaves very little time for 'leisure activities'.

There is, however, where leisure is accepted as a legitimate entitlement of workers, a state in which the person is not working both legitimately and necessarily. This is a state of voluntary idleness. The overarching, positive antonym for work is leisure, which can be divided into active and passive categories of behavior.

The active forms of leisure include pastimes, sports, games, recreation and other amusements. These are times when the person "charges the batteries", engaging in refreshing diversions so that they will be mentally and physically re-tuned to better perform in the realm of work. The passive forms of leisure include: relaxation, repose, rest, requiescence. These periods should provide the person with stillness, with a tranquility not possible in the busy round of work activities.

These times also have a purpose. They are times when the individual is able to distance himself or herself from the busy round and take stock, getting work into perspective so that they will perform more effectively and efficiently than before 238.

When people are found to be run-down, worn-out or exhausted by the pressing urgencies of work they can be prescribed times of leisure, when they can, for a period, escape the duties of life and become mentally and physically renovated. Even these times are considered to be intimately intertwined with work. They are not separate, alternative bases for life, they are the activities and times when human beings, who are naturally and morally fashioned for work, re-create themselves, and, in doing so, function more effectively within the world of work.

This conceptualization of work as "appropriate performance" is not closely tied to particular vocations or aptitudes 239. It is, rather, in human beings, considered to be diligent application to productive endeavor 240. It is very often dissociated from an individual's own aptitudes and abilities unless these have clearly been honed so as to improve the person's potential for work.

There is almost a sense of illegitimacy about "working" at something which one enjoys for itself - enjoyment, after all, is one of the definitional properties of leisure. If one was to respond to the question, "what would you do if you didn't have to work?" with the reply "what I am now doing" most Western people would find it difficult to accept. There seems to be a contradiction inherent in doing what one calls work in a time when one no longer is required to work.

So, for instance, an artist who paints because he or she greatly enjoys the activity, or a tennis player who makes a living from the game, seem in some way to be "cheating". Such people have blurred the boundaries between work and leisure. In order to ensure that this does not provide people with escape from the normal necessity to work they must be categorized as in some way "special". And, in order to remain legitimate they need to be seen as in some way "driven" to apply themselves to their activity by some inner compulsion. Work is about discipline, about applying oneself to activity which is in some way an imposition of ordered endeavor upon the individual.

Those who are not inwardly driven soon find that people around them supply much of the needed resolve to engage in work through their expressed attitudes toward these deviant people. It is the lucky few who are able to combine personal interest with work but they, driven to constant involvement in a form of activity which is normally defined as leisure, need to demonstrate that they have an extraordinary commitment to the attainment of perfection. They are professionals not "amateurs".

The realm of leisure is constantly being redefined as more and more leisure activities are professionalized, transforming them from leisure to work, from a form of activity presumed to be "relaxing" to one which the individual is diligently focused upon and from which the individual "derives an income". We speak of this phenomenon as the professionalization of sport, leisure etc..

The organization of work Return to Chapter Index

Although one would hardly perform work if there were no income attached to it, there is more to work than the income obtained. Work should be performed over extensive periods of time, and the time set aside for it should be spent in activities which are clearly defined as "work related". Talking with someone involved in a large corporation, I was told the following story:

Several people in an office had found that, by hurrying through their tasks, they were able to perform most of the day's required activities in the first three to four hours of the day. They therefore decided to do this and spent much of the afternoon in playing cards.

The manager of their section of the corporation decided that this was entirely unacceptable (for reasons which you, if you are a Western person, will already understand, even if you can't articulate them). He called the offending workers into his office to remonstrate with them.

They asked him whether there was any expressed dissatisfaction with the quality or consistency of their efforts. He answered that there wasn't but that there was a perception that they were lazy because they spent so much time in playing cards. He explained that they were not employed to play cards, but to carry out the duties of their positions.

They were asked, in future, to "space" their work and spread it over the entire day. They were not to indulge in card playing or in excessive periods of "morning tea" or "afternoon tea" but were to use their time in "work related" activity.

This is, of course, reminiscent of Parkinson's (1957) Law:

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion and subordinates multiply at a fixed rate, regardless of the amount of work produced.

...A lack of real activity does not, of necessity, result in leisure. A lack of occupation is not necessarily revealed by a manifest idleness. The thing to be done swells in importance and complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent.
(œParkinson 1957)

A Western person, hearing this story, immediately recognizes a whole constellation of reasons why the workers could not be allowed to continue to "play" during "work hours". Work, in almost all forms of employment, covers a period, and tasks are performed through that period. There are, in all jobs not directly driven by assembly line practices or by "piece" work, times of disguised "inactivity" through the period. Most workers, if they concentrated their efforts, could perform the required tasks of their positions in much less than the time span of work.

It was this recognition which led to "œTaylorism " (see Taylor 1911), the scientific management programs of the early 20th century, which aimed to eliminate "inefficiencies" and ensure that workers performed in the most productive manner possible. It has, similarly, resulted in recent management strategies to "streamline" companies, through concentrating work activity within a smaller workforce 241.

As we observed earlier, these practices are aimed, at a time when new technologies are simplifying work tasks and increasing productivity in many areas, at increasing the work commitment of individuals, requiring them both to work harder and for longer hours. For reasons with which most Western people find it hard to disagree, new management strategies are aimed at increasing commitment to work, not at lessening it. And, we know that this is as it ought to be. As soon as we find that a term has a teleological dimension of this kind, we immediately also know that the term is a prescriptive one. The term work is such a term in the English language.

It is undeniable that labor is something in which all people everywhere engage because some of the tasks which need to be performed in any community require an expenditure of physical or mental effort which is at times irksome to those required to perform the tasks. However, the need to allot a specific period of each day to the performance of such tasks, and then to ensure that people are managed in such a way as to maximize their activity, is a distinctively Western need.

It is this allotment of set times to maximized labor-related activity which uniquely defines work in Western communities. This complements the equally unique relationship perceived between production, possessions and status in Western communities 242 and ensures that people are focused on the status maintenance and attainment prerequisites of their communities.

Because our drive to consumption and accumulation is open-ended, Western people argue that so too must our commitment be to producing the goods and services we "need" 243 . This is a consequence of the Western belief that individuals should diligently apply themselves to productive endeavor, to work, rather than a cause of it.

It is not that we work because our needs are constantly expanding. Rather, the ability to acquire a constantly expanding range and quality of goods and services is evidence of our strong commitment to work 244.

Of course, in the minds of most Western people the two are intimately connected. Since our prime means of obtaining the income necessary to obtaining the goods and services we need is work, we are quite sure that unless we work we will not be able to obtain those goods and services. This, of course, is true, but simply demonstrates how strongly Western people, over the past four centuries, have reinforced the need to work through closely tying both material wellbeing and status attainment and maintenance to its performance.

The most important forms of behavior, organization and meaning in any community are strongly reinforced through the ways in which they are made "necessary" through tying individual and communal wellbeing to them. So people sense that unless they are maintained, life will become increasingly difficult.

Over a period of more than four centuries Western European communities increasingly buttressed "work" in this way. Now, in the early 21st century, Western people are, indeed, very certain that unless they commit themselves to work, both their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of the communities in which they live will be at risk.

In a very real sense, Western people do not work in order to live, they live to work!

Teaching Western Europeans to work Return to Chapter Index

So, how did it happen that Western Europeans became so convinced of the central importance of work? To understand this, we need to look back into Western Europe's historical experiences 245. Here we will focus on a few of the presumptions and practices which led to the present Western commitment to work.

In the past, during the 16th to 19th centuries, as Foucault says,

If it is true that labor is not inscribed among the laws of nature, it is enveloped in the order of the fallen world. This is why idleness is rebellion - the worst form of all ... the sin of idleness is the supreme pride of man once he has fallen, the absurd pride of poverty...

In the Middle Ages, the great sin... was pride... All the 17th century texts, on the contrary, announced the infernal triumph of Sloth: it was sloth that led the round of vices and swept them on.
(Foucault 1971: 56-7)

As Foucault says, by the 17th century, responsible Western people 246 had come to believe that commitment to work was either based on natural law requirements, or that it was necessary to sanctification.

The emphasis, among the responsible people of 17th to 19th century Western Europe, was on the necessity to engage in work, that is, in productive enterprise; in realizing the potential of one's own capacity to labor; of one's own innate "talents"; and of the environment available for exploitation.

John Locke, in the late 17th century, put it like this,

God gave the world to men in common; but... it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labor was to be his title to it).
(1982 (1690), p.21).

It was the necessity to "make the most of oneself through industrious endeavor" that lay at the root of the 18th and 19th century insistence that everyone become involved in productive endeavor.

As Locke (1982, Ch. 5) argued in 1690, God commanded human beings to labor, and the property they accumulated as a consequence of their labor demonstrated their commitment to that industriousness which God required. To do otherwise than industriously accumulate personal property was to rebel against the natural order established by God for the wellbeing of both individuals and communities. Not only was one rebelling against God, by breaking the natural laws for human "progress" the person was also refusing to take his or her communal responsibilities seriously.

The term work summarized and expressed, in human organization and behavior, the central presumptions of the emerging primary ideology of Western Europe 247. Commitment to work demonstrated that the person, as an individual, was dedicated to obtaining the returns which the industrious gained for their dedicated effort. Those returns were important both to the individual and to the community in which he lived. Richard Baxter affirmed this when he proclaimed in 1678,

If God show you a way in which you may lawfully get more than in another way (without wrong to your soul or to any other), if you refuse this and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your Calling, and you refuse to be God's steward.
(1838, p. 377)

As Foucault (1971:46) claimed, during the 17th to 19th centuries there was far greater concern about the consequences of idleness than of illness. It was considered the responsibility of both Governments and responsible citizens to teach the "idle poor" the virtues of consistent work. As Sir William Coventry, in the 1670s, claimed, poor laws 248, which protected the idle from the consequences of their sloth, should be repealed and the Government should establish workhouses 249

... where such as will not work for themselves may be compelled to work for others
(in Appleby 1978, p. 151).

Sayings emphasizing the sinfulness of sloth proliferated through Western Europe, summed up in a number of very similar English proverbs: "Idleness is the beginning of all sin"; "The devil makes work for idle hands"; "Idleness breeds vice"; "Idleness is the devil's workshop". If sloth was sin, indigence and pauperism were its consequences.

By the 18th century it was well understood that indigence was closely tied to immorality. The harshness of the workhouses between the 17th and 20th centuries was necessary to discourage the moral depravity of sloth. And, just as the evils of idleness were denounced, so the virtues of industry were heralded. There was virtue in steady or habitual effort, in diligence in an employment, in applying oneself in a disciplined way to productive endeavor, in

adopting those habits of industry, which always tend to steadiness and sobriety of conduct, and to consequent material wealth and prosperity
(Codere 1951, p. 24).

The morality of work Return to Chapter Index

There was a morality in the consistent, daily commitment of the individual to work, to industriousness 250. The individual gained respect and status through clearly demonstrating a consistent, continual commitment to harnessing his or her environment in the interests of accumulation and production. A conspicuous commitment to industry became the primary evidence of the individual's commitment to upholding the central moral values of Western Europe.

In any community, the morality of individuals is measured in terms of consistent commitment to the central tenets and understandings which drive and give force to systems of status and respect in the community. In Western Europe it became an accepted fact that "responsible people" work hard, and that, as Locke (1982, p. 27) said, "Labor makes the far greatest part of the value of things " 251.

So, it was entirely necessary that individuals who worked hard should retain possession of the things whose value they had thus increased and this "necessarily introduces private possessions " (Locke 1982, p. 22). Hard work gives value to objects, and the evidence of hard work is, therefore, an accumulation of private property. In order to demonstrate the virtues of individuals it was necessary that those who created value should possess the objects within which that value was expressed.

The accumulation of private property by individuals was both just and appropriate since, through their own industry, they had created the property they accumulated. It was neither appropriate nor just that those who created the wealth should be required to share it with others who did not create wealth. Rather, those who did not create wealth for themselves should be compelled to do so. Otherwise they would be a drain on those who through their own productive endeavor had accumulated wealth and had, in this way, demonstrated their commitment to the central moral values of their communities.

Responsible governments ensured that the conditions encouraging and facilitating such activity were maintained, and that those who were "not responsible" were "made responsible" by making the condition of their lives as difficult as possible until they committed themselves to work. This has remained, throughout the 20th and on into the 21st century, a prime responsibility of Government. Governments should educate and train the "workforce", and should provide every inducement and encouragement to people to "work". They should, conversely, strongly discourage idleness and vagrancy 252.

For the past several centuries Western European communities have had (and most still have) strongly enforced laws calculated to ensure that people were "gainfully employed" and had "visible means of support". Anything which might discourage people from strong and continuous commitment to work should be removed in the interests of ensuring that people "worked for their living". Over the past four centuries concerted efforts have been made by responsible Western Europeans to strip people of any other means of subsistence than work aimed at increasing the cash worth and extent of their private property.

From indolent subsistence to Labor-pool worker Return to Chapter Index

Teaching 'The Poor' to Work

As a legacy of the feudal period in Western Europe, many poor peasants between the 16th and 19th centuries owned small parcels of land which provided all or part of their subsistence. They also had rights of use in areas of common land attached to manorial estates but available to all associated with the estate, whether small farmers or rural laborers, where they could forage and graze animals. The land was used for subsistence, not for increasing cash income or private property.

This focus in life was one which emphasized communally determined limitations on the accumulation of property, not an open ended accumulation of private property 253. As such, in the minds of the responsible people of Western Europe, the land these people held was being used "inappropriately". Therefore, as Locke (1690 Ch. 5) reasoned, it should be forfeited to those who would use it "productively", that is, to increase cash income and private property.

Not only were these peasants using the lands they controlled inappropriately, because they obtained a part of their subsistence from it, wage labor, for many of them, was an additional source of income used to augment the subsistence obtained from their own or common land. The Poor were not strongly oriented to the emerging status systems based on accumulation and conspicuous consumption which were driving activity among those who had come to be called the "middle class". In consequence, the "laboring poor" were unreliable workers. They seemed ready to work for only so long as was necessary to obtain the additional income required for a subsistence lifestyle. If they did not need the money, they saw little reason to work 254.

By the end of the 17th century it was already recognized by those who were gaining control in Western Europe that so long as the poor had access to land and could supply part of their own subsistence requirements independently of the emerging work oriented economy, they would continue to treat work in this way. The answer, of course, was to strip away the small parcels of land from the poor, and to take away their access to common land, making them entirely dependent on work in the cash economy for their subsistence. The reasons given for the expropriation of these lands were varied, including, of course, Locke's argument that land-holding should be rationalized to increase its economic productivity.

The upshot was that in England, between 1700 and 1845, more than seven million acres of common land was expropriated and consolidated in the hands of larger landowners who put the greater part of it into pasturage. Considerably more land was transferred from small to large landowners through the termination of leaseholds and through challenging ownership rights where small-holders lacked documentation supporting their ownership, though no records are available to determine the amount of land transferred in this way.

Those who lost their lands in this consolidation became wholly dependent on cash work and increasingly reliant on the social welfare provided by parishes under the Poor Laws. They became a 'labor-pool', dependent for their livelihoods on employment within the mines, factories and sweat-shops of Western Europe; in competition with each other for scarce jobs 255.

In the 19th and 20th centuries the responsible people of Western Europe found themselves with a new responsibility. They had long accepted their responsibility for re-organizing and re-educating the poor of Western Europe. Now they had to accept the same responsibility for 'the natives' of their colonies.

Teaching 'The Natives' to Work Return to Chapter Index

Responsible Western people were well aware of the problems they had encountered in educating the poor in Western Europe over more than four centuries. They realized that one of the major mistakes made had been to engage in land reform without taking into account the movement of people from the countryside. Having nowhere to go, they had 'clogged the highways and byways' during the 16th and 17th centuries and become a major problem in the cities of the 18th and 19th centuries.

They determined not to make the same mistake in their colonies. The colonial authorities would divide the land into regions, setting aside some of the less agriculturally productive areas as 'native reserves' onto which the surplus native population could be moved. They would become a labor-pool of workers, managed by the colonial administration, and employed by various economic enterprises in the colony.

Western Europeans had learned over more than four centuries that human beings were independent individuals not communal beings 256. As the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to Women's Own magazine, October 31 1987, explained,

...there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women.

So, no account needed to be taken of existing indigenous forms of social organization or understandings of their environments. In colony after colony, they employed the same strategy:

This freed up agriculturally valuable land for large scale farming and created labor pools for mining, plantation, large-scale agricultural enterprise and other economic activity. Colonial administrations also closely controlled movement of native populations out of their reserves. They would be allowed to move to administrative centers only by invitation and would return to their reserves afterwards. They would be selected for employment on the reserve and returned there when the employment was terminated.

The breakdown in law and order and in living standards among indigenous populations resulting from the complete disruption of their communities and individual lives were evidence, if any were needed, of the childlike inability of the natives to care for themselves 257.

Gilbert Murray (1900), a late 19th century student of British colonial labor practices, provided a clear summary of the systems of labor exploitation found in British colonies. It has been included in the following footnote 258.

He goes on to provide graphic examples of the ways in which 'useful' and 'useless' 'natives' were treated in various Western European colonies (see footnote 259).

In the 19th century, during Western Europe's expansion into the rest of the world, the emphasis on the importance of work was as strong, if not stronger than in the 17th and 18th centuries. Western Europeans took their commitment to work with them as they invaded the rest of the world.

A common theme of those who wrote on the problems in countries and communities for which they felt they had to take responsibility was that "traditional" people seemed so unwilling to put in a "full day's work".

Cairns explained their attitude,

The intrinsic value of work was revealed by Bishop Smythies (U. M. C. A. [Universities' Mission to Central Africa]) when he noted Africans east of Lake Nyasa clearing ground and cultivating 'on the steepest, most stoney slopes' of a mountain side.

This seems to point to one good thing which may come from the evil of African wars [260 ]. If all was quiet and there was no fear of... marauding tribes and yet no civilization to quicken thought, in a climate where everything comes easily to hand so readily if there are only rivers as there are here, the people would have nothing to keep them from becoming more and more enervated.

(1965, p. 79)

Henry Drummond, commenting on the people of the same area, claimed that "apart from eating, their sole occupation is to talk, and this they do unceasingly" (Cairns 1965: 79). As Cairns claims of European attitudes,

the general attitude was that work, more for the sake of the virtues which it fosters than for the wealth it created, was necessary to a well-ordered purposeful life
(1965, p. 79).

Western Europeans, intent on colonial expansion, believed that they were on a "civilizing" mission and that one of their most important responsibilities was to teach people in other countries and communities to work. Sir Rudolph Slatin's remedy for the people of The Sudan, described by Gilbert Murray, was an example of a common theme,

'The nigger is a lazy beast,' said Slatin, 'and must be compelled to work - compelled by Government.' ' How?' asked his interlocutor. 'With a stick,' was Slatin's reply.
(Gilbert Murray œ1900 p. 135)

Bernard Magubane provided a succinct description of Western attitudes toward non-Western communities in his description of relations between Europeans and Africans in South Africa,

Before they were physically subdued, African traditional societies with plenty of land confronted the requirements of capitalism with difficult problems. The wants of an African living within his subsistence agriculture, cultivating his own mealies (corn), were confined to a karosss (skin cloak) and some pieces of home-made cotton cloth. The prospects of leaving his family to work in a mine, in order to earn wages with which he could buy things he had no use for, did not at once appeal to him.

James Bryce observed that,

The white men, anxious to get to work on the goldreefs, are annoyed at what they call the stupidity and laziness of the native, and usually clamour for legislation to compel the native to come to work, adding, of course, that regular labor would be the best thing in the world for natives.

(Magubane 1975, p. 233)

This belief in the virtue of work was, by the 19th century, so ingrained in Western Europeans that they knew that it was both logical and rational that people be compelled to work, no matter what their objections. Western Europeans had a moral duty to teach the world to work, and they have gone about it in non-Western communities with a missionary zeal.

Over the past forty years, with the resurgence of deregulated capitalism, the reorganization of non-Western regions and communities to serve the demands of capitalism has continued apace. In free trade zones, maquiladoras and export processing zones, wherever labor is cheap and regulation relaxed or non-existent, people will work in substandard conditions, receive low wages, and live in slums.

And, all the while, Western peoples and those who emulate their lifestyles in non-Western countries and communities will continue to expand their consumption and accumulation of the products of that exploitation.

Conclusion Return to Chapter Index

So long as commitment to work, and its inevitable companions - ever-expanding consumption and accumulation - are among the central primary ideological presumptions of Western communities, unregulated capitalism will continue to produce conditions like these around the world.

The emphasis upon the importance of work in Western communities has not diminished in the 20th and 21st centuries. Writers as diverse as Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, Hannah Arendt and Daniel Bell have argued that work is a moral imperative and has, as Bell put it, "always stood at the center of moral consciousness" (in Wolfe 1997 p. 559) 261.

The most important duties and responsibilities of community members, those which, as Kant ((1785) 1909) suggested, secure our own "freedom", are strongly reinforced through the ways in which they are made "necessary" to both individual and communal wellbeing. In Western communities, a wide range of common-sense reasons is given as to why people must be involved in work:

These understandings permeate Western consciousness. They are presented and reinforced in many different ways. Perhaps the most pervasive and effective ways in which they are reinforced are through the varieties of forms of product and service promotion and in the various forms of "entertainment" to which the vast majority of Western people subject themselves for three or four hours a day.

Whether in salacious soap operas, or in advertisements for motor cars, those most admired are usually those who seem to have been able to succeed in the workplace, in the economic arena. They are wealthy, suave, sophisticated, with the easy grace of those who know their own worth. They provide models against which we can measure ourselves or that we can attempt to live by.

To the successful go the spoils! To them belong the fast cars, the yachts, the lavish entertainments and the lifestyles of the "rich and famous". Far from challenging the central moral tenets of Western communities, the magazines and television entertainments of the West strongly reinforce them.

The West is no longer centrally concerned with sexual morality - that belongs to a past age, when people were prudish and no-one seemed prepared even to talk about the possibility of sexual adventure. It is no longer centrally concerned with violence since most of its entertainments glorify it, though it is roundly condemned in the abstract.

It is, of course, centrally concerned with social justice: in a "user pays" environment people get what they deserve! And it is centrally concerned with economic success, which is assumed to be related to work.

There is little evidence that people living in Western communities are evolving beyond their deep-seated moral commitment to work. After a brief flirtation with the 'evils' of 'regulation', 'protectionism' and 'social welfare' 264 in the 1930s-1970s, Western communities have reasserted their subordination to deregulated capitalism and commitment to:

A Personal Observation Return to Chapter Index

Others have explained that the amazing efflorescence of knowledge and invention of the past three hundred years could not possibly have occurred without the capitalist work ethic. It has been the drive to 'profit', William Booth's '10%', which has brought about this explosion in intellectual exploration. I agree. Without an external goad and without a drive to harness human intelligence in this way, the achievements of the modern era would largely not have occurred.

The epitaph of the era might well be, that human beings have been driven to, and beyond, the limits of their individual and communal intellects by those myopically committed to self-promotion and the accumulation of material wealth.

The focuses of intellectual endeavor in the West have far-too-often not emerged from the intellectual curiosity of the researchers, but from a short-sighted drive to satisfy and shape the demands of the employment and investment marketplaces.

The forces which have channeled and circumscribed Western intellectual endeavor have seldom come from intelligent exploration and understanding of long-run consequences. They have been determined by the needs and wants of the capitalist and the consumer.

End of Chapter

Chapter 7:
Capitalism and its Colonies:
Nation-States, Third World Nations, Development and Failing States Return to Index of Chapters

(13/02/16)(27/08/18)

By 1914, 84.4 % of the world's terrestrial area had been colonized by the Europeans. With colonization there came a new paradigm of development. Cecil Rhodes is reputed to have expressed this paradigm eloquently:

We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies...
(UNESCO (2002) œInternational Symposium on Post-Development)

They were overpowered by force of arms. Thereafter, each tribe was faced with a choice of one of two roads leading to subjection: defeat or surrender...

There are various national or ethnical groups in the country [Nigeria]. Ten main groups were recorded during the 1931 census as follows: (1) Hausa, (2) lbo, (3) Yoruba, (4) Fulani, (5) Kanuri, (6) Ibibio, (7) Munshi or Tiv, (8) Edo, (9) Nupe, and (10) Ijaw.... 'there are also a great number of other small tribes too numerous to enumerate separately...'

It is a mistake to designate them 'tribes'. Each of them is a nation by itself with many tribes and clans. There is as much difference between them as there is between Germans, English, Russians and Turks for instance. The fact that they have a common overlord does not destroy this fundamental difference...

All these incompatibilities among the various peoples in the country militate against unification.... It is evident from the experiences of other nations that incompatibilities such as we have enumerated are barriers which cannot be overcome by glossing over them.
(Awolowo 1947, pp. 24,48-9)

We define weak states as countries that lack the essential capacity and/or will to fulfill four sets of critical government responsibilities:

We term countries in the bottom quintile "critically weak states" and deem the 3 weakest states in the world "failed states." Failed states perform markedly worse than all others - even those in their critically weak cohort...

Bottom Quintile:
Somalia; Congo, Dem. Rep.; Burundi; Sudan; Central African Rep.; Zimbabwe; Liberia; Côte D'Ivoire; Angola; Haiti; Sierra Leone; Eritrea; North Korea; Chad; Burma; Guinea-Bissau; Ethiopia; Congo, Rep.; Niger; Nepal; Guinea; Rwanda; Equatorial Guinea; Togo; Uganda; Nigeria
(œRice and Patrick 2008, pp. 3, 9-11)

Given the wide range of tensions, contradictory demands and confrontations to which Third World nations have been subjected by Western capitalist nations over the past 80 years, it is a testament to human resilience that there are any which still escape being classified "critically weak states".

Western people have, over the past three centuries, confidently applied their own understandings and forms of organization to the rest of the world. They have done this in the sure knowledge that these represent the most advanced, developed and sophisticated of all forms of understanding and organization available to human beings.

To introduce those forms to non-Western people has been to start them on the road to capitalist development. It has been assumed that this enables them to by-pass the historically long and thorny route taken by Western Europeans in achieving their advanced state of organization and understanding.265 Chief amongst the forms of organization, thought to be most important in moving into the modern world, have been the political and economic forms of the industrialized West.

To understand the problems encountered in Third World nations over the past sixty years, we need, first, to examine a few of the presumptions underpinning Western political organization and activity as they have been shaped in concert with capitalism over the past four centuries.

Nation-states Return to Chapter Index

From the 16th to the early 20th century, Western Europe experienced widespread, drastic economic reorganization. Capitalism became the ideological frame of life for the middle-classes of Western Europe. From the 17th century this capitalist reorganization coincided with a revolutionary, middle-class driven, political reorganization of the region 266.

Who were the 'Middle-Sorts'? Return to Chapter Index

The nation-state was presumed to be comprised of citizens who, individually, first and foremost, identified with the nation rather than with regions within the nation. They saw the nation's achievements as their own; the nation's problems as personal problems; and they so committed themselves to the nation that when it became threatened, if necessary, they were prepared to die for it. Thomas Hobbes set out the requirements of such a 'Commonwealth' in his Leviathan (1651 Chapter 17, œ'Of The Causes, Generation, And Definition Of A Commonwealth') 267.

Capitalism is based on individual independence, not on interdependence 268. Its political frame has echoed the motivations of the middle ranking individuals who were at the heart of the revolutionary changes of the period. It requires 'democracy'. But this was, always, a 'democracy' of 'responsible' people - a democracy of the middle-classes. The history of voting rights in Western democracies reflects the changing fortunes of sub-populations as they have become accepted by the middle-class base which still largely controls Western democracies 269.

The new political entities, nation-states, represented the interests of the middle-classes. In almost every ethnic community in Western Europe, one could find these people - 'middle sorts' - who socialized and identified with each other across community boundaries and shared common interests both through the state territory in which they were living, and throughout Western Europe. These people, in the communities incorporated into each nation-state, were presumed to be not only able, but willing to subordinate their ethnic and regional interests and commitments to the interests and requirements of the larger political whole within which they were placed.

So, what was it that bound middle ranking people together in this way?

Nations as enclaves of common-interest migrants Return to Chapter Index

An important feature of Western European nationhood has been the 'nationalism' of its people, their apparent identification with the nation-state and its political and bureaucratic organizations, and acceptance of the state's directive legitimacy. Because most Third World national governments have great difficulty in gaining and maintaining acceptance from their populations, we need to understand how European nation-states 270 attained and maintain legitimacy.

'Nation' was a term which originally referred to administrative regions of the medieval Western-Orthodox Church. These western European Orthodox Church regions were governed through bureaucratic organizations controlled by regional ecclesiastical administrators. The representatives of those regions in Rome lived in a set of enclaves known as 'nations'. As Thomas Dandelet (1997) has explained,

it was in medieval Rome that the numerous local identities of Europe were commonly grouped under the five major "nations" of France, England, Spain, Italy, and Germany.

A rag-bag of regions not included in those named was referred to as the 'Netherlands' (the lands beyond the recognized regions).

People who lived in these regions not only thought of themselves as members of their local communities but also knew the names of the administrative regions of the Church within which they lived. Their rulers, on their accession to power, were anointed to their positions by the regional ecclesiastical administrators 271. So, almost inevitably, over a thousand years, political aspirations became identified with the regions and with the names they bore.

The medieval use of the term 'nation', following the western European Orthodox Church's usage of the term in Rome, referred to enclaves of middle-ranking people (those who, from the late 16th century, would consider themselves the 'responsible people' of western Europe), migrants from the same region, who shared some common interest or focus in life. These were the nascent middle-classes of Western Europe, those who, by the 19th century, would espouse 'democratic capitalism'.

During this discussion, we need to remember that the term 'nation' was applied to two quite distinct ideas. The first was to administrative regions of the medieval Church; the second was to enclaves of people living outside their own administrative regions, who banded together, formed cooperative relationships and friendships and were referred to by the name of the administrative region from which they came.

More emphasis was given to 'region of origin' than to 'ethnic identity' in gaining entry and acceptance into a nation (an enclave of migrants), so that nations could consist of people who spoke different dialects or languages (the lingua franca was, of course, Latin), were of different ethnic ancestry, and possibly of very different skin shadings. This would prove important in the intermeshing of middle-class interests across culturally diverse regions of interconnected territories 272 as 'nation-states' emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Nations (as enclaves) were medieval common-interest, fraternal groups 273. Members accepted responsibility for each other and assumed support and co-operation from anyone who was identified as a group member. They developed friendships which over time expanded into extensive networks of support and acquaintanceship. The families of people connected in these ways entertained and accommodated visitors from other areas and regions, and assumed similar support if they travelled outside of their home area. The principle of mutual support and acceptance was of central importance in claiming membership of a nation (Hobsbawm 1990, p. 16).

'Nations' of scholars existed at university centers. Each nation was comprised of people from a particular geographical/ecclesiastical area who supported one another and provided hospitality and security to visitors and new arrivals. The members of such nations maintained their links after graduating and moving to other places. One could move from a 'nation' at one university center, to its counterpart at another university center and be accepted because others in the new center already had connections in the center from which one had come.

Similar nations of merchants and traders existed, which shared identity with scholars and others identified as belonging to the same region as themselves. Networks of such groups developed throughout western Europe. A feeling of affinity emerged between those who identified with each other through membership in common networks of nations (as enclaves). It was these networked people from particular regions who would become the future electorates of emerging nation-states.

Not until the 18th and 19th centuries did the term come to include both the inter-linked people of a particular territory, and the political and bureaucratic state organization of that territory. When it did, this usually resulted from concerted political and/ or revolutionary action involving those who already saw themselves as interconnected and as belonging to the same nation.274

By the 18th century everyone in western Europe knew the name of the region within which they lived and identified themselves in some way as belonging to the region that bore that name. The regions which were metamorphosing into nation-states were, largely, nascent capitalist regions which had been involved in the Reformation. Most of them had renounced or greatly loosened their ties with Rome.

People living in the old medieval Western-Orthodox ecclesiastical districts seem to have had little difficulty in transferring their recognition of those districts to the emerging states and their bureaucratic structures. So, national identity (that is, nationalism) preceded the establishment of nation-states 275.

By the late 19th century, as a consequence of the historical connection between membership of 'nations' and education, trade and other productive and 'cultured' activities, middle-class Western Europeans had become convinced that

As the individual chiefly obtains by means of the nation and in the nation mental culture, power of production, security, and prosperity, so is the civilization of the human race only conceivable and possible by means of the civilization and development of the individual nations.
(List (œ1885, Ch.15))

The nation, which for middle class Western Europeans of the 19th century, was synonymous with the state and its people, was the very embodiment of human existence. As Hegel explained in his lectures on The Philosophy of History :

Subjective volition - Passion - is that which sets men in activity, that which effects "practical" realization. The Idea is the inner spring of action; the State is the actually, existing, realised moral life. For it is the Unity of the universal, essential Will, with that of the individual; and this is "Morality." The Individual living in this unity has a moral life; possesses a value that consists in this substantiality alone.
((2001, pp. 53, 4.) G. W. F. Hegel, œThe Philosophy of History , [1822-1837], translated by J. Sibree, 2001, Batoche Books, Kitchener, Ontario)

Not only was membership of a nation a prerequisite for each individual human being's 'civilization', 'mental culture', 'power of production' and 'morality', the aggregation of small ethnic groupings into large nation-states was assumed to be an evolutionary inevitability 276 . As œList (1885) explained:

Between each individual and entire humanity, however, stands THE NATION, with its special language and literature, with its peculiar origin and history, with its special manners and customs, laws and institutions, with the claims of all these for existence, independence, perfection, and continuance for the future, and with its separate territory; a society which, united by a thousand ties of mind and of interests, combines itself into one independent whole, which recognizes the law of right for and within itself, and in its united character is still opposed to other societies of a similar kind in their national liberty, and consequently can only under the existing conditions of the world maintain self-existence and independence by its own power and resources. ...

A large population, and an extensive territory endowed with manifold national resources, are essential requirements of the normal nationality; they are the fundamental conditions of mental cultivation as well as of material development and political power. A nation restricted in the number of its population and in territory, especially if it has a separate language, can only possess a crippled literature, crippled institutions for promoting art and science. A small State can never bring to complete perfection within its territory the various branches of production. In it all protection becomes mere private monopoly. Only through alliances with more powerful nations, by partly sacrificing the advantages of nationality, and by excessive energy, can it maintain with difficulty its independence.
(Chapter 15)

Eric Hobsbawm put it well. For Western Europeans,

nations were therefore, as it were, in tune with historical evolution only insofar as they extended the scale of human society, other things being equal.
(1990, p. 33)

To quote the British philosopher, economist, employee of the British East India Company and, subsequently, member of parliament, J. S. Mill (1861):

The most united country in Europe, France, is far from being homogeneous: independently of the fragments of foreign nationalities at its remote extremities, it consists, as language and history prove, of two portions, one occupied almost exclusively by a Gallo-Roman population, while in the other the Frankish, Burgundian, and other Teutonic races form a considerable ingredient.

When proper allowance has been made for geographical exigencies, another more purely moral and social consideration offers itself. Experience proves that it is possible for one nationality to merge and be absorbed in another: and when it was originally an inferior and more backward portion of the human race the absorption is greatly to its advantage.

Nobody can suppose that it is not more beneficial to a Breton, or a Basque of French Navarre, to be brought into the current of the ideas and feelings of a highly civilized and cultivated people - to be a member of the French nationality, admitted on equal terms to all the privileges of French citizenship, sharing the advantages of French protection, and the dignity and prestige of French power - than to sulk on his own rocks, the half-savage relic of past times, revolving in his own little mental orbit, without participation or interest in the general movement of the world. The same remark applies to the Welshman or the Scottish Highlander as members of the British nation.
(Mill (1861) 1862 Ch. 16)

Hobsbawm has suggested that the minorities incorporated into the expanding nation-states of Western Europe accepted their incorporation as both positive and inevitable (one needs to remember that we are speaking of the interconnected middle ranking people, not of all those inhabitants in these regions who were excluded from middle-class networks):

... small nationalities or even nation-states which accepted their integration into the larger nation as something positive - or, if one prefers, which accepted the laws of progress - did not recognize any irreconcilable differences between micro-culture and macro-culture either, or were even reconciled to the loss of what could not be adapted to the modern age.

It was the Scots and not the English who invented the concept of the 'North Briton' after the Union of 1707. It was the speakers and champions of Welsh in 19th century Wales who doubted whether their own language, so powerful a medium for religion and poetry, could serve as an all-purpose language of culture in the 19th century world - i.e. who assumed the necessity and advantages of bilingualism.
(1990, p. 35)

Middle-class Western Europeans, convinced that the social, economic, and political world was evolving towards ever increasing size and complexity,277 accepted that small ethnic communities must, inevitably, be absorbed into larger political structures, into nation-states.

Those states, it was believed, should be of sufficient territory, population and resources to enable involvement in the emerging international forms of trade and diplomacy developing amongst Western European nation-states and between them and the United States of America. Bigger was better! And, as ethnic and regional communities became incorporated, they inherited the rights of 'citizens' within the nation-state. So, the government could legitimately claim to represent them, as it did all other people who lived within its territory.

In speaking of nations we are speaking of the coalescence of the old medieval common-interest groups which came from a particular territory. People only identified themselves as members of 'nations' because they were distinguishing themselves from people of other regions of western Europe who shared similar interests and with whom they regularly interacted. The middle-classes of Western Europe were co-operatively interconnected with each other not only within their own national regions, but also across national boundaries. There was a great deal of intellectual, business and social movement between the various 'national' territories 278.

In most Western European territories, the sense of national identity, of mutual support and co-operation among the middle-classes, long preceded the recognition of the 'nation-state' as a political and bureaucratic organization which represented the interests of people who belonged to the nation.

It was not that a government was established which claimed authority within a territory, and that people who did not already identify themselves as belonging to a common nation were required to swear allegiance to it. Rather, nationalism preceded the nation-state, which received its legitimation from the already interconnected people of the territory. Representative government came from national revolution and the establishment of political and bureaucratic systems which represented the middle-class interests of those involved in the revolution.279

The nations of Western Europe included a range of middle-class people from ethnic and regional communities which saw their interests as coinciding with, or complementing those of other middle-class people with whom they identified in national government. National government could act in the interests of the whole territory, assuming support from the 'responsible' people in its various regions.

The focuses of government, its bureaucratic institutions and concerns, inevitably reflected the various interests and concerns of middle ranking people. They had become identified with the interests of the enclaves in which the sense of national identity had been forged. As nation-states emerged, middle ranking people could see their interests and concerns mirrored in government organization and policy making.

Since those people saw the government as representing their interests, they saw, in a truly Hobbesian sense, their interests as coinciding with the interests of the government. They could feel a sense of personal fulfillment in its achievements, and a sense of personal difficulty in its difficulties.

They took these understandings and commitments with them as they determinedly set out to reorganize the rest of the world in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Colonies as the globalization of the Nation-State Return to Chapter Index

(27/05/24)

European nation-states during the 19th century expanded into the rest of the world 280. Wherever they went they extended their political authority through the establishment of protectorates and colonies. As they did in Europe, so they did in the rest of the world. They focused on territory, and assumed the integration of 'responsible' people within the boundaries of the territories they controlled.

Initially, Western European governments did not see their colonial territories as independently evolving nascent nation-states. They saw them as extensions of their own nation-state. The 'colonies' were a part of the evolution of the Western European nation-state, its geographical extension into the world 281.

Like the Bretons, Basques, Welsh, Scottish, Irish and countless other minorities in Western Europe, so with the peoples of Western Europe's colonies. They would soon realize, as List (1885) had explained, the wonderful advantages of 'mental culture, power of production, security, and prosperity' which would be their inheritance. After all, it was obvious that 'the civilization of the human race' is 'only conceivable and possible by means of the civilization and development of the individual nations' 282.

Colonial populations were identified with 'The Poor' of Western Europe and designated 'natives'. A few, usually considered to be 'aristocratic' in some way, were identified as nascently middle-class and sent to the Home Land to be educated and incorporated into the ranks of the nation-state's middle-classes: "by special favor and grudgingly made, citizens" (Houènou œ(1924)). It was this select Western educated elite which would be handed control as the colonies gained independence in the post 2nd World War era.

The 'responsible' people (middle-classes) in colonial territories, whether of local or European origin, were small in number and could access political processes through the institutions at the center of empire. There seemed no reason to replicate political processes in the colonies. Colonies merely required a subset of the bureaucratic administrative structures of the 'home land' which would ensure their smooth functioning and integration into the political and bureaucratic systems of the colonizing nation-state 283.

Most colonial authorities established administrative machinery throughout their territories and assumed its acceptance by the people who inhabited the governed regions 284 . The colonial administrations became the governments of colonial territories. The head of government in the colony was, in British colonies, the 'Governor', representative of the monarch, and ceremonial head of the administration. Beneath him a hierarchy of administrative officials existed, which preserved and accentuated the social order of the Home Land. Similar authority structures were developed in most Western European colonies.

Houènou œ(1924), speaking of the French administrators he had dealings with in Dahomey (Benin), described:

... the daily abuses of the Colonial Policy, and in particular, of the Policy called Native Policy. This Policy is a source of perpetual vexations.

Let me illustrate: A European passing along the highways can arrest a native and condemn him to 15 days imprisonment for the sole reason that he did not take off his hat to a white man. You will say to me that these are insignificant matters; but the arbitrariness goes much farther.

The power of the Administrator is enormous. Contrary to that which happens in Europe, it is the accumulation of all powers; it is the accumulation of legislative and executive powers; it is the accumulation of judicial and administrative powers, - it is despotic power without control.

As the writer Somerset Maugham described them, colonial administrators, taken out of their European milieu, often appeared almost ludicrously self-important caricatures of their counterparts at the centers of empire.

In establishing administrative bureaucracies in colonies, colonial authorities believed they were involved in the historical evolution of those territories by linking them, through the colonizing state, into world-wide political and economic networks. It was believed that, given the evolutionary process of constantly increasing size and complexity, colonized populations could only benefit from (and should be grateful for) the establishment of colonial administration and reorganization of their communities.

As J. S. Mill, erstwhile resident in India and employee of the British East India Company, had put it,

Experience proves that it is possible for one nationality to merge and be absorbed in another: and when it was originally an inferior and more backward portion of the human race the absorption is greatly to its advantage.
(1861, Ch. 16)

To understand the political problems faced by Third World nations in the second-half of the 20th century, we need to realize how unanticipated was their emancipation from Western European colonial status. It was simply not presumed that they were in the process of moving toward 'independence' of any kind. As Winston Churchill said in a speech before the British House of Commons on 18th June 1940,

If we can stand up to [Hitler] all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad and sunlit uplands.

If we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged by the light of a perverted science.

Let us therefore, do our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and the Empire lasts a thousand years men will say, "This was their finest hour".

The idea of grooming colonies for independence was an afterthought (in most cases post-2nd World War) of a dawning realization that, like it or not, most colonial territories were going to gain independence from their European schoolmasters. Most European governments were reluctant to relinquish control of their colonial territories but found themselves with few options.

Unraveling Empires Return to Chapter Index

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The 2nd World War proved a watershed for colonial empires. The European powers were unable, during the war, to closely maintain supervision of their colonies and many colonial administrations had unraveled through neglect. The costs of re-establishing control in the face of increasingly organized resistance from colonial populations were prohibitive 285. Colonial peoples had been co-opted into fighting for their European masters and had received both military training and counter-insurgency training which would serve them well as they returned home and asserted their right to independence.

Kwame Nkrumah, first prime minister of Ghana (1957-1960) and first president (1960-1966), in a 1965 book entitled Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism, provided a realistic, if jaundiced, view of the transition from colonial status to 'independence'. Nkrumah was of the same generation of African leaders as Awolowo of Nigeria, Kaunda of Zambia and œJulius Nyerere of Tanzania. And, like them, from his perspective, 'independence' was simply the new face of Western colonialism. As he explained,

...Developed capitalist countries [will] secure the maximum return in profit from such parts of the international financial complex as they control. However much private capitalism is exhorted to bring about rapid development and a rising standard of living in the less developed areas of the world... faced with a choice, capitalism... will come down on the side of exploitation.

Yasin Kakande has neatly summed up the 21st century consequences for the peoples of former African colonies:

[T]he unchecked exploitation of the continent's natural resources by corporations from outside countries has forced desperate choices upon its citizens. Migrants looking for their own modicum of economic justice have come to the West. But, once they arrive, they discover the extraordinary extents to which they must prove their "worthiness" and acceptance in the same European nations that benefited from taking their homelands' natural resources for profit...

The continent's natural and mineral resources are targets of predatory wealth where no costs are incurred for unfettered exploitation. In many African nations, dictatorial puppets, often handpicked and supported by their Western exploiters, continue this relationship. This occurs at the expense of their own citizens who need and would benefit the most from the resources of their homelands.

Meanwhile, the continent's deprived migrants are seen as "nuisances" by white citizens in Western nations occasionally, but more often are portrayed as "burdens" that "threaten" the nation's economic livelihood.
(Yasin Kakande, œOnly African Resources, Not Migrants, Are Welcomed Into Western Countries, Truthout, August 26, 2018)

Nkrumah's views remain pertinent in understanding 21st century Western attitudes toward former colonial territories:

In order to halt foreign interference in the affairs of developing countries it is necessary to study, understand, expose and actively combat neo-colonialism in whatever guise it may appear. For the methods of neo-colonialists are subtle and varied. They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres.

Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, imperialism simply switches tactics. Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even with certain of its more hated expatriate officials. This means, so it claims, that it is 'giving' independence to its former subjects, to be followed by 'aid' for their development. Under cover of such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about 'freedom', which has come to be known as neo-colonialism.

Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has long exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she turned towards Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two when most countries of that continent were indebted to her. Since then, with methodical thoroughness and touching attention to detail, the Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy, evidence of which can be seen all around the world.

Who really rules in such places as Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal or Italy? If General de Gaulle is 'defecting' from U.S. monopoly control, what interpretation can be placed on his 'experiments' in the Sahara desert, his paratroopers in Gabon, or his trips to Cambodia and Latin America?

Lurking behind such questions are the extended tentacles of the Wall Street octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided by a phenomenon dubbed 'The Invisible Government', arising from Wall Street's connection with the Pentagon and various intelligence services.
(Kwame Nkrumah, 1965, œNeo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism, Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., London, Ch.18) 286

Most European states found themselves with huge debts to the United States, which had bankrolled the war effort and then presented European governments with the bill. For the USA, war had proved good business. The US would use the leverage it gained to reshape the world in the ways which best suited its own interests.

The United States became banker to the world, holding the mortgages of all those states which had gone into debt to fight 'The War'. It became leader of, and a major supplier of armaments of all kinds to the 'Free World' - i.e. the world which accepted and followed its ideological understandings and leadership. For the next fifty years it would live on income generated by those mortgages and new mortgages negotiated with all those Third World countries which came into its orbit as European empires crumbled.

The internal infrastructures of Western European colonial powers had all but collapsed through the war years and they simply did not have the financial means to reassert control of their colonies. The real winners in the aftermath of the war proved to be the two emergent superpowers: the USA and the USSR.

There were new kids on the block, and they were going to take over the world. Neither had been involved in the 19th Century acquisition of colonial empires. They saw no reason why the weakened European states should retain the advantages which privileged access to their colonial empires gave them.

Through the post-war years, the USSR would champion the 'right' of colonial people to independence and back this up with military training and weapons support. The USA, realizing that it was in their interest to ensure they had unfettered access to the colonies, very strongly pressured Western European governments into granting independence to colonial territories.

Western European colonial powers faced the joint pressures of a 'Cold War' between the two superpowers (as they arm-wrestled for international dominance) and US insistence on free access to their colonies. With the combined problems of national indebtedness, costs of taking sides in the developing superpower confrontation, and re-establishing their own faltering infrastructures and economies, their empires became a mill-stone which most Colonial powers could do without.

Much as they might have wanted to retain them, and however strongly they attempted to assert the right to control, one after another, colonial territories gained independence. European colonial empires crumbled over about forty years between 1945 and the 1980s.

I was involved in research aimed at grooming a British colony - The Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony - for independence as late as the early 1970s. As a preliminary to my research I investigated the administrative structures of the colony and found that trainee ministers from the indigenous population had been appointed to each of the colonial administrative departments by the British administration. I was told that the aim was that they should learn how everything worked before taking over (some 3-4 years later).

Assuming that they would have departmental information at their disposal, and interested in their views of where things were going, I interviewed relevant ministers (there were, of course, no British counterparts in the colony since it was an administrative outpost of the British governmental bureaucracy).

They seemed genuinely surprised that I should want to talk with them. Once I began questioning them they quickly explained that they had no access to any ongoing activity or policy making in their departments. Their opinions were simply not sought by the administrative staff who generally thought them something of a nuisance. They had been given offices and titles but there was little or no 'grooming' going on!

Given the British Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, this was not surprising. In the Westminster System, there is a clearly established and carefully maintained separation between the political and administrative arms of government. Few administrative personnel knew how to 'train' future politicians - or felt that it was important to do so!

There was little long-term education or planning engaged in by any of the Western European powers as they handed governmental reins over to indigenous leaders 287. Territories which went from colonial to post-colonial status, simply inherited the colonial bureaucratic machinery and had political processes and institutions appended to them, often less than two years prior to gaining independence.

Taking over alien political and administrative structures Return to Chapter Index

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Colonies moved from being bureaucratic dictatorships to 'parliamentary democracies' with almost no education of the population in democratic ideas or procedures, and often with only a single election of political leaders prior to independence.

It could be claimed that this was because their European masters had simply lost interest, or were genuinely aggrieved at losing control. However, while those might have been considerations, it was also rather naively believed that democracy of the Western European kind was 'natural' to human beings. Freed from the dictatorial and capricious control of 'chiefs' and 'warlords', it was believed that people would revel in the new found freedom which Western forms of governmental organization gave them 288.

Many of the problems of Third World countries seem to center on attempts to recreate, in alien environments, Western-style 'nations' and Western-style 'nationalism' amongst their peoples. In attempting to emulate Western nations, they have introduced expectations and understandings which appear to fit very poorly into the cultural understandings and expectations indigenous to the peoples of post-colonial territories.

To understand the presumptions and expectations of those responsible for establishing new nations in the post-War period, we need to understand why they assumed the viability of such nation-states, and why they presumed that strong national sentiments amongst the people incorporated in such states would automatically follow the establishment of new nations. We also need to understand the nature of the political expectations and presumptions of the populations which have, in large measure, shaped the post-War experience of Third World nations.

A growing chorus of Third World writers has insisted on the inappropriateness of such presumptions for the government of post-colonial countries. Julius Ihonvbere is among the clearer of such voices, claiming that:

... the masses in Africa, relate to the state as an exploitative, coercive and alien structure [whose] custodians lack credibility and legitimacy and are thus incapable of mobilising or leading the people.
(Ihonvbere 1994, p. 43)

More recently, Kamilu Fage has claimed of Nigeria 289

... Nigerian experience leaves much to be desired. After several attempts at democratization (involving constitutional reforms, elections etc), the country is yet to evolve a viable, virile and stable democracy that will elicit popular support and or even have direct bearing on the lives of the generality of the ordinary people.

... the subtle re-emergence of the ugly signs of the past (violence, bickering and fracas in the state and national assemblies, feuds between the executive and legislative arms of the government, electoral malpractices, corruption, oppression etc) raise the fear that Nigerian democracy is still on shaky grounds.
(Fage 2007)

Richard Joseph of the Brookings Institute has given a somber description of Nigeria in 2010:

In 2005, the U.S. National Intelligence Council predicted the "outright collapse of Nigeria as a nation-state within the next 15 years." Five years later, Nigerians themselves often refer to their country as a "failed state". What most characterizes life for its citizens is insecurity. Armed robbery has recently become more terrifying with kidnapping conducted to extract ransoms. On the eve of Nigeria's 50th anniversary in October 2010, basic needs in electricity, water, and public health are unmet. Even fuel for cars is often scarce in this major petroleum exporter.

Nigeria is today a bruised and disoriented nation.
(œJoseph 2010)

In 2021 Nigeria, long a troubled nation, is close to 'failed state' status. But, for Western 'experts' in statecraft, that is due to 'criminals, separatists, and Islamist insurgents who increasingly threaten the government's grip on power, as do rampant corruption, economic malaise, and rising poverty'.

The solution to all this is, of course, the re-involvement of Western 'experts' and their governments to clean up the resulting mess and re-establish political and civil order in the 'nation'.

John Campbell and Robert Rotberg, apparently confident that Nigeria (with more than a little help from such neo-colonialist nations as the US) can be reclaimed from its 'failed state' status, present their 'solution'. Nigeria might yet, finally, emerge into those broad and sunlit uplands of Western nation-statehood. As they explain:

Nigeria is in big trouble. If a state's first obligation to those it governs is to provide for their security and maintain a monopoly on the use of violence, then Nigeria has failed, even if some other aspects of the state still function. Criminals, separatists, and Islamist insurgents increasingly threaten the government's grip on power, as do rampant corruption, economic malaise, and rising poverty.

Most failed states in Africa - such [as] the Central African Republic, Somalia, and South Sudan - are small or marginal; Nigeria, by contrast, boasts a growing population of 214 million. It is expected to become the world's third-largest country by population by 2050. And prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it had Africa's largest economy or its second-largest after South Africa (depending on how one measures). That is why state failure in Nigeria is having profound consequences for the entire region-and beyond. It bodes especially ill for the stability and well-being of weak states in Nigeria's vicinity, as evidenced by the spread of jihadi and criminal groups to Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ivory Coast, Mali, and Niger.

Nigeria's collapse can be reversed, however. Increasingly, prominent Nigerian opinion-makers are calling for an alternative to the current administration-whether through a national convention to rebuild the state from scratch, the breakup of Nigeria into smaller countries, or a domestic military takeover of the kind Nigeria has experienced repeatedly since independence in 1960. Many other Nigerians decry the government's inability to keep citizens safe but support its calls for external assistance in the form of economic and military aid.

Though, given the US track record across the world, I am more than dubious about their suggested solution to Nigeria's problems:

...[The] United States, must acknowledge that Nigeria is now a failed state. In recognition of that fact, they should deepen their engagement with the country and seek to hold the current administration accountable for its failures while also working with it to provide security and right the economy. In addition, they should engage and support Nigerian civil society as it forges what must ultimately be a Nigerian-led reconstruction effort.
(John Campbell and Robert I. Rotberg, œThe Giant of Africa Is Failing:Only Nigeria Can Save Itself-but the United States Can Help, Foreign Affairs, May 31, 2021)

As we have seen, Nigeria's woes are not of recent origin. The region formally œcreated as a colonial territory by the British in 1914, comprised more than 250 different ethnic groupings and over 400 different languages and dialects spoken by groups within the new colony.

It is, of course, not alone in having been contrived by European colonial powers from an agglomeration of ethnic groupings, languages and dialects in a geographical region for their own purposes. Other post-colonial nations around the world suffer from very similar internal problems, seldom addressed in the rush to 'independence' in the post 1940s world. And, in consequence, attempts at 'democratically' organized government have seldom been successful.

Uzodinma Iweala, in a 2022 attempt to find some kind of a 'solution' to the ongoing problems of Nigeria, has provided an interesting sketch of its past experiences at building viable national governmental structures and alliances. As he explains:

Nigeria has always seemed like an impossibility. From the moment of its independence in 1960, observers questioned the country's viability as a multiethnic, multireligious state. How could a country divided among two major religions and hundreds of different ethnic groups possibly stay together? When the devastating Nigerian civil war broke out in 1967, that skepticism appeared warranted. Perhaps, many concluded, Nigeria wasn't meant to be.

Ever since the war, one of the chief aims of Nigeria's political project has been to prove the doubters, both foreign and domestic, wrong. A long line of civilian and military leaders have sought, sometimes with brute force, to preserve the unified state, which they have held up as a good unto itself regardless of its effect on the people. Each year, supposed experts from outside Nigeria declare that the state has failed and will soon disintegrate. And yet each year, Nigeria does not disintegrate. Instead, like a chronically sick patient who lacks a proper diagnosis and thus adequate treatment, it soldiers on, its condition steadily worsening.
(Uzodinma Iweala, œNigeria's Second Independence: Why the Giant of Africa Needs to Start Over, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2022)

Any long-term viable political resolution of the national political problems of such nations is highly unlikely. They were cobbled together for Western European purposes with little or no understanding of indigenous realities. And, once established, they were 'supported' and required to persist as nation-states in a continued Western determination to retain access to and control of those regions to their own advantage. Any attempt to depart from preset Western-approved forms of government, if it challenged those interests, has been vigorously opposed

I have no 'solution' to offer. Such nations are contrived entities subject to continued exploitation by external powers. Without insulation from that exploitative interference in their affairs, it would be miraculous indeed for them to develop national political cohesion and coherence. Even if left to their own devices, as Britain's experience in the aftermath of Roman rule demonstrates, it will take many years to reconfigure their geographical regions to reflect indigenous realities.

The Last Western Colony
(and its Native Reserves)

Words Matter! This is Expulsion or Extermination
Once again the US, with Western approval, is complicit in genocide
There are no innocent people... So We're Killing Them All!
Return to Chapter Index

What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Update Dates for this section

...Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Gaza...
The mask has slipped. The depravity revealed.
the true heart of a dying empire is bared...
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...
Death and destruction as far as the eye can see...
œ'Jewish Zionism' is become what 'Nazism' is: œa byword for 'Depravity'

The population profile of Israel, in 2024, is changing. As œpeople of empathic conscience choose to leave an Israel clearly being controlled by bigots, thugs and venal mega-wealth, others, ideologically sympathetic to the genocidal policies and practices of 2024 Israel, like moths to a flame, are being attracted to the excitement and promise of a 'wild frontier' of 'The West'. A promise of self-aggrandizement, rapine, and of indulging their darker natures290.

The depravity of elements within the Israeli population, including its 'Defense force', has become increasingly blatant. œAbu Ghraib and other œ'black site' prisons, kept hidden from public view, developed and refined the torture techniques, but Israel's Sde Teiman and Beit Lid prison guards have further developed them with both public knowledge and approval.

B'Tselem has issued a full report entitled Welcome to Hell (August 2024) on "more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian: a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy. Facilities in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering operate as de-facto torture camps". 291

Oren Ziv described The depth of public support for this Israeli program of systematic torture and humiliation of Palestinians:

...Established in the wake of the First Intifada, Force 100 is an IDF unit responsible for overseeing Palestinian detainees and repressing uprisings in military prisons. Since October, the unit has also operated the Sde Teiman military base, where Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have been detained, abused, and tortured.

The soldiers came to Beit Lid to support and demand the release of ten of their comrades who had been arrested on suspicion of raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman. The detainee, according to Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHRI), was hospitalized three weeks ago with severe injuries to his rectum. Earlier that Monday, protesters and far-right Knesset members amassed outside of Sde Teiman after Israeli military police entered the base to detain the suspects, which included a commander in Force 100.

"The Military Advocate General [Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi] loves Nukhba," read one sign outside Beit Lid, referring to the elite military unit of Hamas whose members the protesters believed were detained at Sde Teiman. "The Military Advocate General is a criminal," read another.

...Along with members of Force 100, the demonstrators included Kahanists, hilltop settler youth from the occupied West Bank, supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and viewers of the TV station Channel 14. In the past, it was possible to say that these groups were a political minority. But today, they are in the government, they run the country's law enforcement, and they are the face of Israel.

The blatancy of the depravity described by Ziv is scarcely surprising. It echoes the attitudes of Israeli leaders such as Smotrich, Gallant and Netanyahu:

Finance Minister and member of the security cabinet Bezalel Smotrich called on Monday for annihilating Israel's enemies, saying "There are no half measures. [The Gazan cities of] Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat - total annihilation. 'You will blot out the œremembrance of Amalek from under heaven' - there's no place under heaven."...

Smotrich, who also is a minister in the Defense Ministry, added that when Hamas is destroyed, Israel must "clear out, with God's help, with one blow, wicked Hezbollah in the north, and really send a message that what will happen to those who harm the Jewish people is the same as those who have tried to harm us in the past - they will be destroyed, destroyed, destroyed. And it will echo for decades to come."...
(Noa Shpigel, œIsrael's Far-right Minister Smotrich Calls for 'No Half Measures' in the 'Total Annihilation' of Gaza, Haaretz, April 30, 2024)

Gideon Levy, in an unenviable Sisyphean bid to find an empathic conscience in Israel, has described the 'problem':

Can a society exist without a conscience? Can a state continue to function after its removal? Is the conscience a vital organ, like the heart or the brain, or is it like the spleen or the gall bladder, which you can live without? Perhaps it's like the thyroid: You can live without it, as long as you take a replacement for the hormone? These questions should be asked by every Israeli now, after the country underwent a total consciencectomy on October 7, 2023. Israel has been without a conscience ever since. For now, it appears to be alive...

The process that Israel has undergone in the past several months can only be described as a separation from its conscience. It had been sick for years; now it is dead. There are a myriad explanations and justifications, but the question remains, in all its force: How can a society continue to endure over time without a conscience...
(Gideon Levy, œIsrael Has Had a 'Conscience-ectomy.' Can a Society Survive Without a Conscience?, Haaretz, June 12, 2024)

The problem Levy faces is that, in a search for the Israeli conscience, he is confronting a vanishing quality. Those of empathic conscience are emigrating, and those sociopathically driven by the lure of a conscienceless land within which they can freely express their own warped natures are replacing them. How long will it be before Levy himself, disillusioned by it all, follows suit?

On the 26th of February, 2024, Mr. Ralph Wilde, the legal representative of the League of Arab States, before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), presented the League's case for the illegality of Israel's occupation of the whole of both historical and mandatory Palestine, and, further, the illegality of the United Nations' decision to pronounce the legal existence of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948.292

The clear legal case for the illegitimacy of that United Nations decision to partition Palestine and proclaim the existence of the state of Israel, alienating more than three-quarters of the historical and mandatory State of Palestine, forms the introductory passage of the League's case.

This presentation sets the scene for all that follows in this section:

œTenth Hearing: ICJ on Israeli Policies in Occupied Palestinian Territories, United Nations, February 26, 2024.293

On the 25th of March, 2024, The œUnited Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, the immediate and unconditional release of hostages and "the urgent need to expand the flow" of aid into Gaza. There were 14 votes in favor with the United States abstaining because "We did not agree with everything with the resolution."

For both Israel and The United States, this was now a 'non-binding resolution' for which they had not voted. Both the 'abstention' and the Israeli reaction to it were mere optics in a US election year.

It's time to replace this useless Council with something that produces more than vain symbolic gestures in the face of humanitarian disaster and blatant genocide.

With neither Israel nor the US accepting the UNSC resolution, Israel has œcontinued its monstrous, genocidal crimes against humanity, with United States' support' 294.

Satellites reveal the vast devastation across the Gaza Strip. The new reality that the Israel Defense Forces' operations have created will affect the entire region for years. This is how it looks:

One of Israel's most dramatic acts in the war, which erupted following Hamas' terror attack, is the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Gazans from their homes and the destruction of large swaths of the Strip. Residents, military officials and journalists describe scenes of vast devastation. "It's like after an atomic bomb," one of them reported in Haaretz after visiting northern Gaza.

An accurate estimation of the destruction is a challenging task due to the fog of war - and as the IDF restricts entry by journalists. But it's possible to create a map of the destruction using satellite data, which shows that at least half of all the buildings in the enclave are likely to have been damaged or destroyed, according to American researchers. Most of the destruction is in the north, but bitter fighting is also underway in the south, as is seen in the satellite data. Some 1.7 million Gazans have fled their homes during the war, and most of them are now in the south, the United Nations says. Huge tent cities have been put up along the Egyptian border. A new humanitarian, security and diplomatic reality has emerged, and it will shape the region for years to come.
(Yarden Michaeli and Avi Scharf, œGazans Fled Their Homes. They Have Nowhere to Return to 'It's Mind-blowing': 1.7 Million Palestinians Escaped Israel's Bombardment of Gaza. Most of Their Homes Have Been Damaged or Destroyed, Haaretz, February 08, 2024)

As the year [2023] draws to an end, 90% of the roughly 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza strip have been made homeless, chased by the Israeli military from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip and back, told to shelter in allegedly safe zones which are subsequently bombed. There is hunger verging on starvation, scant medical care, no fuel, no regular electricity supply, and no indication that the slaughter will end any time soon.

The reason given by the US for vetoing the Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire was that this would be 'unrealistic'. Meanwhile the German government, led by its feminist foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, demands 'humanitarian pauses' as an alternative to peace, after which the killings are to continue until 'Hamas', prepared for death by a free UNRWA meal, will finally be 'rooted out'

What is eerie is that in the unending stream of reports and commentary on the Gaza war it is hardly ever mentioned that Israel is a nuclear power...Israel has at its disposal the complete range of means of nuclear delivery, the so-called tripod: land-based, air-based, and sea-based. Israel's land-based nuclear missiles are allegedly kept in silos deep enough to withstand a nuclear attack, making them suitable not just for a first but also for a second strike.
(Wolfgang Streeck, œMaster and Servant, Sidecar, December 20, 2023)

"This is the fastest decline in a population's nutrition status ever recorded. That means children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen." - Melanie Ward, Medical Aid for Palestinians.

1 MARCH - The news coming out of Gaza grows worse by the day, although we think each day it cannot get worse. The entire area is now on the verge of tipping into a famine. Half a million people are facing imminent starvation, according to senior U.N. officials. Yesterday, in northern Gaza, Israel opened fire on people as they crowded desprately around aid trucks in what is now being called the Flour Massacre. More than 100 people were killed, more than 700 wounded.

In the West Bank, Palestinians live in fear of what the Israelis will do to them once the IDF is finished in Gaza. The Israeli authorities have killed more than 380 West Bank Palestinians since 7 October. This does not include the many killed by rabid right-wing settlers, who terrorize their Palestinian neighbors with impunity and the support of the IDF.

As this catastrophe worsens, at this point surpassing al=Nakba in brutality, it is ever more urgent that Palestinian voices are heard....(œ"Starvation as a weapon of war." Palestinian voices have never been more urgent, The Floutist, March 02, 2024)

The Western reaction in response to the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians and bombing of Palestinian 'reservations' has, at best, been muted, protesting the 'failure to adequately distinguish' between 'combatants' and 'civilians'.

As though, in a population which has been subjected to decades of abuse, terror and death at the hands of Israeli 'settlers' and supporting Israeli 'authorities', there will be any true demarcation between such assumed populations of Palestinians.

The Western reaction is, of course, unremarkable. The history of Western colonialism is fraught with similar suppression of 'native populations', denial of land and property rights and 'legally' justified treatment of indigenous populations as 'lesser humans' without prior claim to their invaded homelands.

The Israeli response to Palestinian 'aggression' is merely a 21st century demonstration of Western responses throughout the colonized world to indigenous attempts to defend their legitimate rights and protest their subjugation.

And, in April 2024, Western peoples have, once again, amply demonstrated their discriminatory 'anger' in their response to the killing of 'Western Aid Workers' (their response to the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians has, at best, been muted). 295

The contrast between Western Mainstream Media protests at the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians over decades and the killing of 7 Western aid workers could not be more stark. Palestinian deaths and 'casualties' have simply not generated this kind of 'outrage'!

The rationale for treating Palestinians as 'illegitimate squatters', without legal right to their properties ('legitimizing' Israeli demolition of such 'unregistered' property) is a consequence of Israeli presumption of the State's right and responsibility to legitimize property ownership through land and property registration.

All property claims based on pre-Israeli forms of property title are, by this process, rendered illegitimate. with those putative 'owners' required to obtain new legal title to their properties through appeal to the land and property registration processes of the Israeli State.

Colonizing Europeans, over several centuries, have treated their invaded territories as terra nullius - legally deemed to be unoccupied or uninhabited - presuming their right to ignore pre-colonial property rights, opinions and concerns of the colonized in pursuing their objectives. And the colonized have learned to impotently accept this.296

In December 2023 the world once again witnessed the impotence of its governments when faced with Western intransigence.

Once again, the hegemonic center of 'The West' treated the rest of the world with arrogant, dismissive contempt, and their governments metaphorically shrugged their shoulders and, displaying their impotence before the world, submissively accepted the US veto and went home!

On December 8th the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres œaddressed an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, called to 'discuss the catastrophic situation in Gaza....urging the body to help end carnage in the war-battered enclave through a lasting humanitarian ceasefire'.

Following that impassioned plea to council members, 'a resolution tabled late afternoon in the chamber calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire was vetoed by the United States'.

And, apparently, that was the end of the matter! The United States said 'No', so what could they do?

If the United Nations' most important decision making body could not decisively deal with an existing and ongoing genocide then what on earth is it there for?

In the first half of December, 2023, the only government actively attempting to punish Israel and its sponsors for their ongoing genocide is œthe war-torn nation of Yemen! 297

The psychopathic evil of that Western colonizing Empire and its colonial proxy - Israeli authorities and their Defense Forces - is being openly, arrogantly and dismissively displayed before the world in the last months of 2023 and on into 2024.

But, as The West learned the hard way, prolonged colonial oppression breeds a people who yearn to be free and that, inevitably leads to liberation movements, armed struggle, and a growing awareness that freedom demands sacrifice.

What Israel is doing to the people of Gaza will not break their spirits, it will lead to a renewed determination to be rid of their oppressors298.

On 5th December, 2023, five days after the 'multi-day pause in hostilities' (below) ended, the Gaza bombing has intensified and the Western Media insists on calling Israel's actions 'War'!

Words Matter! This is Expulsion or Extermination Return to Chapter Index

(04/10/24)

Words Matter! What the world has been witnessing in Palestine and Lebanon is not WAR, it is a Massacre: an act of cruel and wanton murder by psychopaths.

The Gaza populations are imprisoned victims of Genocide and the indiscriminate killing of Lebanese civilians ('because they are acting as human shields protecting 'the terrorist organization' Hezbollah') are crimes against humanity.

The United States is fully complicit in this. It provides the bombs, missiles, ammunition and air and sea cover enabling these heinous crimes against humanity and tries, despite the clear evidence, to convince humanity that it is 'doing all it can' to 'minimize casualties'!.

An editorial in The Jerusalem Post described the long-held Jewish religious 'right' rationale for Israeli invasion and 'settling' of Lebanon:

Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh called for the conquest of Lebanon and the settlement of Southern Lebanon in a letter published on Wednesday...

A gift given to the Jewish people

He highlighted that Lebanon was part of the Land of Israel and was given to the Jewish people by God, citing verses that claimed that the Land of Israel stretched until the Euphrates River. "In our generation, God gives us the ability to receive the gift [of Israel] again, to conquer and settle the land."

"Today it is clear that the time has come to conquer the Lebanese territories as well, only in this way can the threat be removed and true peace brought to the entire country. After the conquest and expulsion of the hostile population, a Jewish settlement must be established, thus completing the victory."...

Other rabbis have echoed similar calls, with Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi Shalita saying, "We need to end the war with Lebanon and a new way for the Messiah and redemption for the people of Israel will be come to be."
(Editorial, œIsraeli Rabbi calls for Israel to conquer Lebanon and settle it, The Jerusalem Post, September 27, 2024)

If the United States does not immediately withdraw all air and sea cover and cease delivering weaponry and monetary support to Israel then it is directly responsible for these massacres and must be held to account by the rest of the world!

DUBAI, Nov 21 (Reuters) - A Qatar-mediated agreement between Israel and Hamas for the release of hostages and a multi-day pause in hostilities is in its "final stages" and is "closer than it has ever been," a source briefed on the talks told Reuters on Tuesday.

The deal brokers the release of around 50 civilian hostages by Hamas and the release of Palestinian women and children from Israeli custody, the source briefed on the talks said.

This is the unparalleled legacy Israel and its Western sponsors present to humanity in 2024:

Hezbollah tried to project continuity of leadership and mission Saturday - saying it would continue "confronting the enemy" = as Iran's supreme leader called on followers to support the Lebanese militant group, the linchpin of Tehran's regional "axis of resistance." Israel cast Nasrallah's killing as a mortal blow to Hezbollah and a lesson to other militant groups in the region
(Kareem Fahim et al, œNasrallah's death stuns Lebanon, as Israel pummels Beirut, Washington Post, 28 September, 2024)

And all that was being discussed on November 21st, 2023 was a 'multi-day pause in hostilities'!

After a cynical 6 day pause (ensuring that United States' citizens could celebrate their 'Thanksgiving Day' free of media reports on the Israeli genocide in Gaza (which might remind them of the œsad and horrific genocide of their own indigenous populations)) on December 01, 2023, the wanton killing recommenced and œHealth officials in Gaza reported 178 deaths and nearly 600 injuries in the renewed bombardment.299.

The ongoing horror of a genocidal massacre of Gaza's population seems to have numbed the world into a fatalistic acceptance of what is happening.

Not even Israel's announcement that it intends to 'resettle' Palestinians in central African countries seems to have stirred the world's governments and international organizations to meaningful action against Israel. Shalom Yerushalmi of The Times of Israel explained:

The "voluntary" resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the government, with a senior official saying that Israel has held talks with several countries for their potential absorption.

Zman Israel, The Times of Israel's Hebrew sister site, has learned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition is conducting secret contacts for accepting thousands of immigrants from Gaza with Congo, in addition to other nations.

"Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we're in talks with others," a senior source in the security cabinet said....

Last Monday, Netanyahu told a Likud faction meeting that he is working to facilitate the voluntary migration of Gazans to other countries.

"Our problem is [finding] countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it," he said.

The prime minister was responding to Likud MK Danny Danon, who claimed that "the world is already discussing the possibilities of voluntary immigration," though the idea has been roundly rejected by the international community.
(Shalom Yerushalmi, œIsrael in talks with Congo and other countries on Gaza 'voluntary migration' plan, The Times of Israel, January 03, 2024)

On 27th September, 2024, in the wake of indiscriminate killing of Lebanese civilians ('because they were acting as human shields protecting 'the terrorist organization' Hezbollah') Netanyahu, œaddressing the United Nations General Assembly, demonstrated, once again, that true evil masquerades as an angel of light.

The depraved behavior of Israel and of its leadership over many years, summed up in Netanyahu's psychopathic determination to either expel or eliminate all 'Arabs' from the 'Promised Land' (which includes much more than the current boundaries of Israel and the 'Occupied Territories') has been openly and devastatingly demonstrated in its expansion of its 'war' into Lebanon.

Israel is openly explaining to the world that it is finding a 'solution' to the 'problem' created by sustained bombing of an entire population, destroying or damaging more than half of Gaza's residential properties. It will unceremoniously dump the victims in African nations bullied and bribed into accepting them.

Yet, still, the worlds' 'leaders' and its principal international forums fail to act.

We are witnessing the 21st century's version of the Nazi transport of ethnic populations to 'labor' camps. A new version of Germany's 'final solution' to the problem of unwanted 'nuisance' peoples from its territories by the Jewish Zionists of Israel. It took a long time for the World to react last time. How long will it take before it decides to act to prevent a repetition of these atrocities?

Or, instead, will it be another version of the œUnited States' 'Trails of Tears' in forced marches of US' Indigenous populations to 'reservations', with none of the perpetrators held to account?

It would, indeed, be naive to believe that, for Jewish Zionists, this 'relocation' program will conclude with the relocation of the Gazan population. Unless the World acts to stop all this in its tracks, the ethnic-cleansings will continue until all of that mythical 'Land of Israel' is emptied of its non-Jewish residents!

It is time for 'The West' to take moral and legal responsibility for ensuring that such acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing do not occur and that those involved are brought to trial.

Not one of the perpetrators, whatever their rank and whatever their 'justifications', must be allowed to escape answering for their crimes in the aftermath of it all 300.

The world's leaders have a duty, not only to their own constituents but to humanity, to, right now, begin the process of establishing the necessary institutional structures, assembling the personnel required and compiling the lists of those who must not be allowed to escape justice.

From November 2023, the horror of the holocaust and the horror of Israel's demolition of Gaza should both be burned into the memories of all people. 'Never again' should any nation or organization be allowed to perpetrate such crimes against humanity.

But that will only happen if the world insists that, just as those responsible for Auschwitz had to be brought before an international tribunal to answer for their crimes, so must those responsible for the genocidal demolition of Gaza.

Genocide is genocide, no matter who the perpetrators and who the victims!

On December 29, 2023, South Africa œsubmitted a case to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.301

Mike Corder described Israel's response and determination to defend itself (no doubt with the aim of miring the challenge in years of legal wrangling):

The Israeli government rejected "with disgust" the genocide accusations, calling it a "blood libel." A Foreign Ministry statement said South Africa's case lacks a legal foundation and constitutes a "vile exploitation and cheapening" of the court.

Israel also accused South Africa of cooperating with Hamas...

The statement also said Israel operates according to international law and focuses its military actions solely against Hamas, adding that the residents of Gaza are not an enemy. It asserted that it takes steps to minimize harm to civilians and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory.
(Mike Corder, œSouth Africa launches case at top UN court accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, Associated Press, December 29, 2023)

On January 11th South Africa presented its case before the United Nations International Court of Justice. In a truly professional and detailed expose of Israel's genocidal behavior, the South African team presented example after example to illustrate their case. The entire presentation should become a model for those who, in future cases, prepare and present their evidence. It can be viewed in a video posted on YouTube by the United Nations œSouth Africa levels accusations of 'genocidal conduct' against Israel at UN Int'l Court of Justice.

On January 12th, Israel presented its rebuttal: œIsrael defends itself against genocide case brought to ICJ by South Africa. Democracy Now, presented its considered view of Israel's performance in a video presentation entitled œ'"Gaslighting & Cherry-Picking": How Israel Is Defending Itself at World Court on Charges of Genocide.

In a deft inversion of reality, the opening Israeli presentation began with the argument that 'the applicant has put before the court a profoundly distorted factual and legal picture'. It then proceeded to present its own 'profoundly distorted factual and legal picture', a masterclass, as Democracy Now explained, of gaslighting and Cherry-Picking' in defense of genocide bringing to mind the United States' defense of its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 2023-4 we are confronted by a Western colonial enterprise demonstrating, once again, the true nature of The West's invasion, subjugation and exploitation of peoples around the world over the past 500 years. Those crimes against humanity have, in large measure, been buried beneath an avalanche of self-righteous propaganda.

This must not be allowed to happen now! Let's, at last, bring an end to 500 years of genocidal colonization. Never again must the perpetrators of such crimes be allowed to escape justice.

I'm sure Houènou would have concluded that, had 17th - 19th Century colonizing powers been able to access weapons such as those used by Israel in the 21st Century, they would unhesitatingly have employed them to subdue their 'native rebellions'. And the 'justifications' they would have given (had they even felt them necessary) would have been very similar to those we are hearing from the psychopathic Western colonizers of this century!

As Indrajit Samarajiva says:

This is why the open support for openly genocidal Israel comes so easy. They're following the same old genocidal program, just with modern bombs and mass media.

Genocide is the glory of Europe and the genesis of America. Hell, it's even in the Declaration of Independence....

Call the inhabitants of the land you want savages, and then mercilessly savage them. As my historical thesis goes, same shit, different day.

America inherited Britain's colonies after WWII and continued genociding natives, just with more modern machinery and more mendacity. They undertook numerous murder campaigns across the Middle East in living memory, and are now making a graveyard of Gaza, brutally accelerating the slow-motion genocide of Palestine. The same old pogromming is just the latest TV programming. To a disgusting amount of highly propagandized people, this is still a good thing.....
(Indrajit Samarajiva, œThe Deep Coding Of Genocide In The Western Brain, indi.ca, November 02, 2023)

We must not allow the West to bury its crimes against Palestinian people using the self-righteous propaganda of Western colonialism and we must certainly not allow the psychopaths responsible for this heinous crime to belittle it using the language of colonialism: the 'self-defense' of 'innocent settlers' and 'civilians' against 'unprovoked' native belligerence.302

Over more than 75 years, Western nations have consistently claimed that they 'support a two state solution' to the Israel/ Palestine 'problem'. And, over the past 75 years, at the same time, the aggressive, state-supported, movement of 'Israeli Settlers' into putatively 'Palestinian' lands has continued uninterrupted 303.

This is the very definition of 'hypocrisy': "feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not : behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

The 'problem' of the expansion of 'illegal' settlements on Palestinian lands is so large that any attempt at a 'two state solution' to it all seems not merely unlikely but patently impossible.

In an Al Jazeera episode of 'Centre Stage' Ilan Pappé argues that a two state solution to the Israel/ Palestine problem is no longer possible and the only solution, a unified Palestinian State including both Jewish and Palestinian peoples, is only possible if/ when the present-day Israel has 'gone through a de-Zionization (or decolonization) process'.

This, he argues, is realistically possible provided that Palestinians become politically unified, prepared to take advantage of an unravelling Israel 'disintegrating from within'.

...We can see now, the struggle within Jewish society between two camps, the secular Jews and the religious Jews, and they find it very difficult to find anything in common.

So, first of all, I think that this is disintegrating from within. I think there is an implosion of the society from within.

Secondly, the state relies so much on the United States that the moment that there is a scenario by which America, for whatever reason, not necessarily pro-Palestinian reasons, is unable or unwilling to provide the financial military aid to Israel, it has less capacity to keep its economy or military capacity.

So, I think, I'm much more clear about the disintegration of the Zionist project. I really think we're beginning to see the end of this...

œAl Jazeera English, Centre Stage: In Gaza now, it's worse than ethnic cleansing, February 25, 2024..

Mohammad Shtayyeh (Palestinian Authority Prime Minister from 2019 to 2024), in an essay entitled 'The Best Way to End Israel's War in Gaza: Reviving the Arab Peace Initiative Would Resolve the Conflict - and Build a New Palestinian Reality', explained the conditions which would have to be met in achieving such a unified Palestinian leadership 'prepared to take advantage of an unravelling Israel 'disintegrating from within'':

Crucially, the postwar administration of Gaza and the West Bank will have to be unified. There must be a single, inclusive Palestinian government responsible for all Palestinian territories. The PA [Palestinian Authority] will not undertake responsibility for Gaza at the behest of the Israeli government. But it would do so as part of a comprehensive agreement that is supported by the international community and the main Arab countries. In such a scenario, the Palestinian leadership would need to consult with all Palestinian stakeholders, including political organizations and civil society institutions, to ensure that any such government is acceptable to the broadest possible constituency.

The first priority of the plan must be to provide security and ensure peace so that Palestinians and international donors can begin the urgent work of relief and reconstruction in Gaza. Any new security arrangements will need to be implemented with the help of Arab and international partners. During my tenure as prime minister, there was growing recognition that the Palestinian security sector needed serious reform and restructuring. To implement these reforms, however, the PA needed strong international and Arab support, which was only partially delivered. At the same time, the International Criminal Court, which the Palestinian leadership has granted full jurisdiction over crimes committed on Palestinian territory, must bring to justice those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity or impunity will continue to prevail.

Given the asymmetry of power between the Israelis and the Palestinians, progress on building a viable Palestinian state will require the strong oversight of a commanding, evenhanded mediator. Only the United Nations, with the support of the major world powers, can fulfill that role. A peace envoy should be appointed to work on the preparation of an international peace conference to secure the implementation of the plan. In case of deadlock between the two sides - for example over matters concerning security or access to border entry points - this mediator must assert absolute authority...
(Mohammad Shtayyeh, œThe Best Way to End Israel's War in Gaza: Reviving the Arab Peace Initiative Would Resolve the Conflict - and Build a New Palestinian Reality>, Foreign Affairs, July 04, 2024)

If true, that a united 'Palestinian Authority' can only be achieved through outside mediation, then Pappé's vision of a united Palestine taking advantage of an 'unravelling Israel' is mere wishful thinking.

Unless Palestinians can put aside their differences and act as a truly unified people, Israel will continue its long-standing policy of fomenting disunion between them in order to weaken their resistance and prevent their integration into a unified, genuinely 'democratic' 'multiethnic' state.

An Aljazeera report entitled 'Mapping Israeli occupation: Thirteen maps explain how Israel's military control over the Palestinian people affects every aspect of their lives.' described it all:

There are more than 700 road obstacles across the West Bank, including 140 checkpoints. These checkpoints severely limit Palestinian freedom of movement. While Palestinians may have to wait for hours at these checkpoints and travel along segregated road networks, Israelis can travel freely on their own "bypass roads" which have been built on Palestinian land to connect illegal Israeli settlements to major metropolitan areas inside Israel.

About 70,000 Palestinians with Israeli work permits cross through Israeli military checkpoints on their way to their workplaces every day. They work beyond the Green Line inside Israel due to the high unemployment rate in the Palestinian territories - a byproduct of the 54-year Israeli occupation....

Since 2002, Israel has been constructing a wall that stretches for more than 700 kilometres. The concrete barrier is one of the most powerful symbols of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

The wall, which reaches up to eight metres high, cuts deep into Palestinian territory and has resulted in the confiscation of large swaths of fertile Palestinian land, the ghettoisation of Palestinian towns and villages, and has cut off thousands of Palestinians from social services, schools and farmland.
(Mohammed Haddad, œMapping Israeli occupation: Thirteen maps explain how Israel's military control over the Palestinian people affects every aspect of their lives, Aljazeera, May 19, 2021)

For Jewish and Christian Zionists there has, at least since the œpost WW1 League of Nations Mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, been no genuine drive toward establishing a 'two-state solution' to the 'problem' of the Palestinian inhabitants of the region.

'Ethnic Cleansing' is not a recent Zionist aspiration.

Since the œBalfour Declaration's commitment to establishing a "national home for the Jewish people", Zionists have always seen any attempt to establish definitive boundaries to Jewish occupation as interim compromises settling their 'right to possession' of that territory without setting the boundaries of future conquest.

Ethnic Cleansing from The River of Egypt to the Euphrates River' has always been the undeclared policy of Zionism.304

In June 2023 the Israeli Government handed responsibility for accelerating the movement of 'settlers' into Palestinian areas to religious and ultranationalist politicians with close ties to the settlement movement. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand settler leader, was granted cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and vowed to double the settler population in the occupied West Bank.

Elaborating on his June 2023 mission to accelerate the movement of 'settlers' into Palestinian areas, on December 31, 2023, Smotrich spelt out Israel's intention of 'ethnic cleansing' Gaza:

In an interview to army radio, the far-right minister said that his "demand" was for the Gaza Strip to stop being a "hotbed where two million people grow up on hatred and aspire to destroy the State of Israel."

Without outlining his preferred method, Smotrich then suggested that the removal of around 90 percent of Gaza's residents would help achieve his goal. "If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million, the whole discourse about the day after will be different," he said.

[For further information see:]

The Religious Zionism party chairman then noted that in order to regain security, Israel must control the Gaza Strip, and that "in order to control the territory militarily over time, you must also have civilian presence there."

Smotrich's comments are the latest in a growing list of troubling remarks by Israeli lawmakers to seemingly support expelling Gazans en masse out of the Strip in order to ensure Israel's security after the war....
(Israel News, œ'100-200,000, Not Two Million': Israel's Finance Minister Envisions Depopulated Gaza, Haaretz , December 31, 2023)

Since June 2023, aggressive settler invasions of Palestinian lands, including killing those who resisted, increased dramatically. Israel had, effectively, declared an all-out war against the Palestinian populations of both The West Bank and Gaza. All with explicit United States' endorsement and both military and diplomatic support 305.

In October 2023 Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, in an act of desperation in the face of unprecedented violations of Palestinian rights and responsibilities over the past several months, attacked Israel.306

After œseventy five years of Western colonial invasion and expropriation of Palestinian lands and livelihoods, Palestinians effectively retaliated to that invasion and subjugation, launching an attack on the self-proclaimed 'only democracy in the Middle East'.

The Israeli response has been horrific. As the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant insisted in a comment reminiscent of Nazi explanations of concentration camp victims, "œWe are fighting human animals"

A 12 October 2023 United Nations report described what was happening:

Humanitarians are continuing to support Gaza's population as best they can. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said that together with UNRWA it delivered fresh bread from "bakeries still able to operate" and food to over 175,000 displaced people across 88 shelters on Wednesday, with plans to "reach over 800,000 people across Palestine".

The humanitarian affairs coordination office (OCHA) reported that mass displacement has been continuing, increasing by 30 per cent in just the previous 24 hours, said UN Spokesperson Stêphane Dujarric, briefing reporters in New York.

This brings the cumulative figure to more than 338,000, "of whom over two thirds are taking shelter in schools run by UNRWA", the UN Relief and Works Agency, he added. Nearly 218,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) are sheltering in 92 of their schools.

More than 2,500 units of housing have been destroyed or severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable, while nearly 23,000 others have sustained moderate to minor damage.

At least 88 education facilities have been struck, including 18 UNRWA schools, two of which were used as emergency shelters for displaced people, as well as 70 Palestinian Authority schools.

This means that for the sixth consecutive day, more than 600,000 children have had no access to education in a safe place in Gaza", said the Spokesperson.
(œHumanitarians call for urgent aid access to Gaza, UN News, 12 October 2023)

Once again the US, with Western approval, is complicit in genocide Return to Chapter Index

With œthousands killed, many more injured, and incessant indiscriminate bombing, Gaza with its trapped and abused population is being systematically demolished. John Helmer summed up the situation on 21 October, 2023:

On the Gaza front, Hamas has fought the IDF to a standstill outside the Gaza border wall. The Israel Air Force has dropped about 4,000 tonnes of bombs per week, 8,000 tonnes to October 21; that is more than the US Air Force dropped on Afghanistan in the peak year of 2019.

More than 3,500 Palestinians have been killed so far, including at least 1,030 children and hundreds of family units; more than 12,500 people have been injured, one million Palestinians displaced, and thousands of homes destroyed. About 1,200 are missing believed to be trapped under the rubble.

The Israeli and US government record, reported by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in Washington, documents the continuing firing from Gaza into Israeli territory in what the ISW calls its "œIran updates".

A prolonged IDF siege threatens to kill several hundred thousand Palestinians by starvation, dehydration, disease, and a combination of artillery and aerial bombardment, while leaving the Hamas forces relatively unscathed and waiting to inflict a higher rate of casualties on the IDF than it has ever experienced.

...On the northern front across the Lebanon border, there have been exchanges of missile, drone, anti-tank rocket, artillery, and mortar fire between the IDF and Hezbollah. There have been casualties on both sides. Border settlements on the Israeli side have been evacuated to the south....
(John Helmer, œMemo On The Final Solution For One State - Israel Or Palestine, Dances with Bears, October 21, 2023)

And, in the midst of this classic Western colonial response to 'native unrest' in its colonies, The United States, with Western approval, has colluded in the genocide:

The Pentagon has deployed two aircraft carriers - and their supporting ships - to the eastern Mediterranean since the Israel-Hamas conflict started.

The ships are meant as a deterrent to ensure the conflict does not expand, but bring a significant amount of power to a region that already hosts a number of US military ships, planes and troops.
(œUS aircraft carriers: What they bring to the Middle East, The Straits Times, 16 October 2023)

Eight days later, with Israel blocking all humanitarian assistance and incessantly bombing Gaza, Defense News provided a summary of US 'support' weaponry being committed to Israel's 'defense' against 'Hamas Terrorists'307:

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently announced the Defense Department is also deploying a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery and Patriot air defense battalions to the region.

By providing Iron Domes, the U.S. continues to widen the spigot of security aid entering Israel. In the week after Hamas' attack, Pentagon and Israeli officials announced the arrival of American aircraft stocked with air defense supplies and munitions. It has since expanded this aid to include artillery rounds, armored vehicles and precision-guided munitions, according to Israeli and American officials.

The supply effort is just one stream in a larger outpouring of American support....
(Noah Robertson, Bryant Harris and Jen Judson, œUS agrees to send two Iron Dome batteries to Israel, Defense News, October 25, 2023)

The sociopathic core of Western Capitalism is becoming increasingly obvious.

Not only has it carpet-bombed those it designates 'enemies', 'terrorists' and 'threats': destroying homes and lives and leaving devastation in its wake, in 2023 It has protected its protégé, Israel, from outside attack while it proceeds with the psychopathic demolition of its rebellious native reserve308.

This Hamas led rebellion against Palestinian oppression is the culmination of years of indiscriminate Israeli violence:

"After this operation there will not be a single Hamas building left standing in Gaza, and we plan to change the rules of the game,'' said armed forces deputy chief of staff Brigadier General Dan Harel...

"We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas government and all its wings,'' General Harel said.

At least 57 civilians, including 21 children, have been killed in the Israeli bombardment, a UN spokesman said.
(Adel Zaanoun, œIsrael bombs Gaza in 'all-out war' on Hamas, News.com.au, September 17, 2009)

That was 2009, but it could have been yesterday, last week, last year... A trapped and brutalized people, blamed for resisting Israeli oppression, for maintaining their identities and their self-respect, refusing simply to be victims.

Just in case the world has forgotten what European colonial expansion looked like: the subjugation of countries and communities through brute military force, Israel continues to remind us.

On October 12, 2023, Hamas, having survived years of determined Israeli attempts at bombing and destroying 'not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas government and all its wings', is once again under attack. And, of course, Israel, the victim of 'unprovoked' beliigerence by 'Hamas Terrorists', has no option. Once again, the Israeli 'Prime Minister promises to make Hamas understand they "have made a mistake of historic proportions" for a war "we didn't want'.309

John Maggio, in yet another report by a Western reporter entitled 'Israel Declares War After Attacks From Hamas', described the scene:

Palestinian militant group Hamas has launched an attack on Israel, firing rockets from the Gaza Strip and taking hundreds of soldiers and civilians as hostages over the border.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced these attacks on X, formerly known as Twitter. The Prime Minister promises to make Hamas understand they "have made a mistake of historic proportions" for a war "we didn't want."

Hamas entered Israel on Saturday, October 7, attacking villages, military bases, and a music festival near the border. Some of the Hamas militants came across the border by breaching the several miles of border fencing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, while others flew across the border with motorized paragliders....

The international community has had a mixed reaction to the attack. Numerous landmarks have depicted the Israeli flag and its colors as a show of support, including the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, New York's Empire State Building, a screen in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the Sydney Opera House, and the White House in Washington, DC. Just outside the UK's Israeli embassy, thousands of pro-Palestinian marched, letting off fireworks and chanting, "Israel is a terrorist state" and "free Palestine." Similar demonstrations have sprung up across the US, including in New York's Times Square and outside the Israeli consulates in Atlanta and Chicago.
(John Maggio, œIsrael Declares War After Attacks From Hamas, The Tower, October 12, 2023)

The multipolar 21st century will be a violent one if nations tolerate Western (or any other) colonial invasion and occupation with its common response when 'native reserves' become 'troublesome':

Indiscriminate destruction and thousands of homeless victims

Damage caused by Israeli airstrikes in Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip (Mahmud Hams / AFP/Getty Images)

The work of bigots, thugs, charlatans and venal mega-wealth, armed and funded by the center of world capitalism: the United States of America310. Sociopathically, callously 'œmowing the grass', with most of the Western World providing either implicit or explicit support:

Recent violence in Jerusalem and airstrikes on Gaza - which have injured hundreds of people and killed dozens, including children are having a devastating impact on communities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today. MSF said the force used by Israeli police is unacceptable.

"The Israeli bombing is incredibly heavy and stronger than previous bombing campaigns," said Hellen Ottens-Patterson, MSF head of mission in the OPT. "Relentless bombing has destroyed many homes and buildings all around us. It's not safe to go outside, and no one is safe inside, people are trapped. Emergency health workers are taking incredible but necessary risks to move around."

From the evening of May 10 to the morning of May 13, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported that Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 67 people, including 17 children, with nearly 400 injured. The Israeli authorities reported the death of seven people as a result of rockets and missiles launched by Palestinian militant groups in Gaza during the same period.
(œHeavy Bombing by Israel is causing a catastrophic Situation in Gaza, Médecins Sans Frontières, May 13, 2021)

A "mutual and simultaneous" ceasefire was declared between Israel and Hamas to the David and Goliath (Israel would do well to remember the conclusion to that!) conflict between Hamas and Israel (beginning on Friday 21st May 2021 at 2 a.m.).

But this is, of course, merely the conclusion to this round of Israeli atrocities against Palestinian communities both in the occupied territories and within the borders of Israel. The checkpoints remain, Israeli control of the occupied territories remains. Israel will continue settling land it seized and occupied through war with its neighbors, while simultaneously relegating its Palestinian citizens, who represent a fifth of the Israeli population, to increasingly abject, second-class status311

Khalil Shikaki summed up this 2021 version of Israel's ongoing 'mowing of the grass':

The current confrontation is unfolding across four theaters. The Gaza-Israeli military bombardment has destroyed civilian infrastructure and killed more than 200 Palestinians, 30 percent of them children, and ten Israelis. Ethnonational tensions within Israel have sparked unprecedented intercommunal riots and violence between Arabs and Jews. Palestinians and Israeli police, extreme Jewish nationalist-religious groups, and settlers are in a standoff in East Jerusalem over access to Muslim holy places and the planned evictions of Arab families from the Shaikh Jarrah neighborhood. And in the West Bank, tensions are high after Israeli forces killed four Palestinian demonstrators and injured dozens more on May 18, a day of protest that engulfed major Palestinian cities. Nonetheless, tensions there remain contained by joint PA [Palestinian Authority] and Israeli efforts.

These dynamics have been building since Israel invaded Gaza in 2014. That war marked the end of any real hope of striking a deal to end the conflict, as then U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had been working to do. After 2014, relations between both sides worsened and the prospect of a two-state solution gradually diminished....

There should be no illusion about the role of the international community here. At best, Arab states and others, including Washington, can help manage the conflict only by making the status quo sustainable. They do not, however, have the capacity or political will to force Israel to respect international law or Abbas and the PA to respect the norms of good governance. As hard as it may be, Israelis and Palestinians must do that themselves.
(Khalil Shikaki, œFighting in Gaza Marks the Start of a More Violent Era: The Search for a Two-State Solution is Over, Foreign Affairs, May 19, 2021)

Houènou provided a bleak African perspective on the 'colonial experience':

Europe has inaugurated in the Colonies an area of veritable savagery and real barbarism which is carried out with science and premeditation - with all the art and all the refinement of civilization. The unfortunate natives have mingled their destinies with yours...

The USA has, without accepting responsibility for the results, armed and funded this murderous regime and must be held responsible for Israel's behavior. If Western nations are not prepared to condemn both Israel and the United States for all this then they share complicity!

A song from my childhood, sung with feeling and reverence by members of the congregation, remains with me even now. Its first two lines were:

Not to Sinai! Not to Sinai!

But to Zion We've arrived...

And, when I asked what it meant, those deeply devout Pentecostalists opened their King James Bibles and turned to the Book of Hebrews, Chapter 12 Verses 18 and 22:

For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest...

But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem...

And they explained as simply as they could to an enquiring child: "We are not saved by 'Works', not saved by adhering to a Law which can only condemn us: We are saved by Grace, through the infinite and tender care of a loving God. Sinai stands for an impossible set of laws; Zion stands for the tender love of God for all His creatures and creation. This song reminds us of this fact and reminds us also that there is only one command: Love God and learn to love all his creatures and creation as He does. As Jesus commands us":

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself.(Luke Ch.10 V.27)

This command and the accompanying story of the Good Samaritan is founded in the Book of Leviticus:

(08/04/19) The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.(Leviticus Chapter 19 Verse 34)

This was, indeed, the vision of a Zionist Utopia, given substance through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As Yuval Achouch and Yoann Morvan describe:

The Zionist utopia gave birth to another more specific utopia - the kibbutz - that developed in Palestine as a network of primarily agricultural communities starting in 1910. Influenced by the ways of thinking ranging from anarchism to socialism in its every form, the members of the first kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz, in Hebrew) set themselves in the forefront of a new type of socialist revolution. The kibbutzim multiplied: 7 in 1920, 32 locations in 1930, 85 in 1940 and nearly 150 on the eve of the State's birth in 1947 (Avrahami, 1998). The main tool of the Zionist national structure, the kibbutz was also one of the most downright successful socialist experiments in the world.
(Yuval Achouch and Yoann Morvan, œThe Kibbutz and "Development Towns" in Israel: Zionist utopias: Ideals ensnared in a tormented history, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, UMR LAVUE 7218, Laboratoire Mosaiques, 2012, Utopia and Spatial Justice, 5, May 2017)

So, what has gone wrong? Where is that utopian vision of an inclusive, caring, integrated community of human beings in the early 21st century?

What an inspiration to the world such a society would have been. But, like all such visions, it has been overtaken by bigots, thugs, charlatans and venal mega-wealth.

Hagai El-Ad, in a New York Times Opinion contribution focusing on an upcoming election in the self-proclaimed 'only 'real' democracy in the Middle East', entitled 'Democracy, Israeli Style: An election, a peace plan and an endless occupation', summed up the 21st century reality:

Unless the international community... mak[es] Israel finally choose between further oppression of Palestinians and facing real consequences, the occupation will continue. The Trump administration, clearly, isn't up to this task. But the United Nations, including the Security Council, key member states of the European Union - Israel's largest trading partner - and international public opinion all have ample leverage. And Americans who sincerely believe in human rights and democracy, not just as empty slogans or bargaining chips but as genuine demands, need not wait until 2020 to flex their political power.

Together with the systemic overtaking of lands and the imposition of restrictions on freedom of movement, the denial of political rights was one of the cornerstones of apartheid South Africa. That country, too, considered itself a democracy.

Many Israelis will consider April 9 a celebration of democracy. It's not. This Election Day should be nothing more than a painful reminder of a deeply undemocratic reality, one that the Trump administration seems pleased to perpetuate - and which the rest of the international community will continue to allow until it finally stops looking the other way. We, the nearly 14 million human beings living on this land, need a future that is worth fighting for: one based on the common humanity of Palestinians and Israelis who believe in a future of justice, equality, human rights and democracy - for all of us.
(Hagai El-Ad, œDemocracy, Israeli Style: An election, a peace plan and an endless occupation, New York Times, April 7, 2019)

Shlomo Ben-Ami has summed up the predictable outcome of the 2019 Israeli election:

After another election dominated by disinformation and smears against Israeli Arabs, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has secured a fourth consecutive term. The outcome is an indictment of Israeli democracy, and particularly of the Israeli left and center, which responded to Netanyahu's open racism with pablum and platitudes...

Sadly, the election leaves no doubt about what awaits Israel in the coming years. A cabal of Netanyahu cronies and family members, racist messianic settlers, and Orthodox parties with opportunistic designs on the state budget will drag Israel toward a new single-state reality that will resemble apartheid South Africa.
(Shlomo Ben-Ami, œIsrael Doubles Down on Illiberal Democracy, Project Syndicate, Apr 10, 2019)

There are no innocent people... So We're Killing Them All! Return to Chapter Index

(18/12/17) (10/01/18) (15/05/18) (21/01/19) (07/04/19) (23/05/18) (22/01/19) (30/12/23) (20/06/24)

Twenty-first century Israel is the very antithesis of utopian Zionism, displaying a Godless sociopathic disregard for that Levitical command: 'The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.''

This morning I woke to a news report telling me that Israel was bombing Gaza because its people would not play dead; like a man who has his foot on the throat of another, telling him that this is his fault because he keeps on 'struggling'. As an Israeli spokesperson put it: "We have to bomb them because they keep shooting rockets at us".

This was œwritten on 4th December 2012.

Nothing has changed! The provocations remain312:

All those Western states which have either actively supported Israeli depredations in Palestinian areas (or have implicitly endorsed them through silence and positive interaction with the Israeli state) share complicity in this anachronous colonial enterprise. Conscience-salving 'aid packages' to Palestinian communities do not absolve those states from such complicity.

Michelle Alexander has explained the 'problems' envisaged by those who fail to speak out: placing expediency over morality in a time when the world is in desperate need of moral leadership315:

...Our elected representatives, who operate in a political environment where Israel's political lobby holds well-documented power, have consistently minimized and deflected criticism of the State of Israel, even as it has grown more emboldened in its occupation of Palestinian territory and adopted some practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.

Many civil rights activists and organizations have remained silent as well, not because they lack concern or sympathy for the Palestinian people, but because they fear loss of funding from foundations, and false charges of anti-Semitism. They worry, as I once did, that their important social justice work will be compromised or discredited by smear campaigns.

Similarly, many students are fearful of expressing support for Palestinian rights because of the McCarthyite tactics of secret organizations like Canary Mission, which blacklists those who publicly dare to support boycotts against Israel, jeopardizing their employment prospects and future careers.
(Michelle Alexander, œTime to Break the Silence on Palestine, New York Times, January 19, 2019)

In the face of such moral cowardice in Western communities, what is left for Palestinians to do but to futilely protest their impoverishing dispossession and imprisonment? 316

I was brought up on the horrific stories of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War Two317. A trapped and brutalized people were blamed for resisting Nazi oppression, for maintaining their identities and their self-respect and refusing simply to be victims. I was inspired by those stories (and I still am!).

Now, I am witness to similar atrocities, but now I am supposed to accept that the behavior is reasonable because it comes from the West! (Yes The West!) No, this is not a 'Jewish' problem, any more than the atrocities of the past, committed against indigenous inhabitants of North America and many other colonial and post-colonial territories, were 'Protestant' or 'Roman Catholic' problems (and yes, Israel is a Western colony, politically, financially and militarily supported by the West; replete with its own nuclear arsenal and degrading and degraded 'native reserves'318).

The charters and legislative enablers contrived by European governments to justify, in their own minds, the subjugation and dispossession of colonial populations, is matched by similar legalisms of the past 50 years to justify Israeli activity319. This report to the US Congress: Jeremy M. Sharp, œU.S. Foreign Aid to Israel (Congressional Research Service RL33222, April 10, 2018) gives an interesting summation of the importance of US involvement in Israel's economic and military strength. As the 2016 version of the report said:

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $127.4 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance, although in the past Israel also received significant economic assistance.

At a signing ceremony at the State Department on September 14, 2016, representatives of the U.S. and Israeli governments signed a new ten-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid covering FY2019 to FY2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledges to provide $38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in FMF grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel. This new MOU will replace the current $30 billion 10-year agreement, which runs through FY2018.

...In addition, under the terms of the new MOU, the Administration pledges to request $500 million in annual combined funding for joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense programs such as Iron Dome, Arrow II and Arrow III, and David's Sling. Previous MOUs did not include missile defense funding. Finally, as part of the new MOU, it has been reported that Israel pledged to reimburse the U.S. government if Israel receives more congressional assistance for FMF or missile defense in the last years of the current MOU (2017-2018). Israel also may have pledged not to request that Congress appropriate regular or supplemental military aid to Israel above the agreed upon annual amounts in the 2019-2028 MOU except in emergency circumstances, such as a regional war. In response, many Members of Congress have reiterated that funds pledged by the executive branch in any MOU are always subject to Congressional approval and that Congress may appropriate funds as it sees fit....

This is a Western problem; yet another display of a predilection for blaming victims for the consequences of aggressive self-interest which stretches back at least to the late 15th century: they shouldn't get in the way; they need to accept that times are changing; they 'need to adapt'; they need to 'compromise'.320
(See Who were 'The Poor'? for some of the treatment meted out to their own 'poor' by 18th century British elites.)

The trajectory of this last 'born out of time' Western adventure into colonialism is ominous.

As Yeats presciently described it:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...
...What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
(W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming.)

After the Colonies Return to Chapter Index

Following the Second World War, Western imperial powers, with varying degrees of reluctance, moved out of their colonies. As they did so, they created 'new nations', with responsibility for government usually inherited by Western-educated elites. Their training, based on Western European understandings of the world, led them to believe that Western forms of political and administrative organization were essential to the ongoing well-being of their people.

Most European commentators simply assumed that where there was a nation-state one would soon find an emerging sense of nationalism. The viability of the nation-state was taken for granted and political failure could only result from political and economic ineptitude and/ or from a failure to provide properly representative government. The subsequent histories of post-colonial states, in large part, reflect attempts to adapt Western nation-state organization to their territorial and ethnic realities.

Obafemi Awolowo's (1947) description/explanation of Nigerian realities was indeed prescient (and applicable to many other post-colonial nation-states).

Amongst the important influences on governments and people in Third World countries have been the reification of 'the state' and 'the people' in most discussion of Third World nations and peoples. This has been accompanied by the formulation of governmental policies based on that reification.

Instead of squarely facing and taking into account the ethnic diversities of post-colonial nation-states, there has been a belief in their inherent unity and ability to be treated as unified wholes. Their post-colonial reorganization has usually been undertaken as an exercise in 'modernizing' inherently homogeneous nation-states.

The modernization thesis,321 espoused in various forms and with various emphases by most development specialists over the past fifty years, has been an optimistic one. It has assumed that, for those nations which genuinely and consistently implement the necessary social, political and economic changes, transformation into modern industrialized nation-states is inevitable.

A Few Assumptions underpinning Post-Colonial 'Development' Return to Chapter Index

The state has been assumed to be a self-existent entity, separate from the communities which it controls, and able to impose necessary changes, however radical, on its populace 322. Important responsibilities placed on new nation-states by development and 'nation-building' specialists have included establishing those institutions necessary to economic development, and providing the social and political climate necessary to stimulate self-interested, competitive material accumulation. It has been assumed that this would result in an inevitable 'take-off into self-sustained economic growth' (cf. Rostow 1956, 1961).

Because most political and economic theorists and practitioners believe that 'traditional' societies are being transformed into modern societies, with traditional features destined for oblivion, Third World communities have been regarded as transient. Problems encountered by 'traditionally oriented' individuals and communities are assumed to be, in large measure, consequences of this shift to modernity. So, rather than focusing on the social problems of such communities, one needs to step up the pace of modernization.

Third World governments, it has been believed 323 should, therefore, in the face of the breakdown of law and order and social cohesion in traditional communities, more rigorously implement those measures which will transform them into industrialized nation-states, with all the advantages of such a transformation.

The dissolution of the old is a necessary precursor and concomitant of modernization and the state should keep its eyes firmly fixed on that goal, not deviating to attend to problems which are inevitable, but transient consequences of moving toward it. As Sangmpam put it:

... modernization theory assumes an imaginary society because the real society in the Third World is perceived as 'transient'

... Various solutions have been proposed to combat underdevelopment. Central to these solutions is the role assigned to the state as the 'engine of development'. Until recently, it was thought that an authoritarian state could better perform 'developmentalist' tasks.

In recent years, the state has been invested with the capacity to move toward democracy, which presumably will lead to socioeconomic development. The belief in the state is reinforced by the call to 'bring-the-state-back-in', according to which the state and its policies reflect almost autonomous institutions and the actions of those occupying these institutions.
(Sangmpam 1994, p. 1)

This assumes a 'government' separate from the people it governs, with political leaders somehow separate from and able to impose their policies on the populace (echoing colonial administrative practice). All this is based, of course, on a reification of 'government' and the separation of a 'political environment' from other 'environments' such as the 'economic' and the 'social' (see People and recognized Environments). It also assumes the depersonalization of government and a clear separation between its political and administrative arms, that is institutional, routinised Western-style government (see Max Weber (1968)).

Politicians, in Western countries, are usually identified with their parties and platforms. The people they represent assume that they will support their party in parliament and only secondarily focus on the local needs and interests of the electorate. Members of parliament are insulated from the impersonal institutional bureaucracies through which government policies are carried out.

In the Third World, these presumptions are usually difficult to sustain. Political activity is commonly not separate from other forms of activity, and those with political power exercise it personally. Political parties often find it difficult to pursue a coherent set of policies since members of parliament are focused on their own electorates' concerns. That is, government, both in formulating policy and in the delivery of services is personalized 324 .

For people who live in communities where it is both natural and proper for leaders to be personally connected with their followers, this personalization is unexceptional. Government is not separate from the people, and politicians access the administrative departments of government through networks of patron-client relationships which link not only the administrative bureaucracy and politicians, but also politicians and their constituents.

International forces Return to Chapter Index

From 1945 to 1990, post-colonial nations were subjected to a forty-five year period of 'cold war' between the two 'superpowers' which emerged from the Second World War. Both superpowers held contradictory, but nonetheless equally Western ideologies, which they each attempted to impose on the rest of the world.

This, in turn, split the world into three camps:

Development Agencies, Human Rights and Structural Adjustment Programs Return to Chapter Index

(04/08/16)

As new Third World nations emerged from the late 1940s onwards, confronted by enormous political and economic problems, the industrialized world became increasingly aware of the need to 'develop' 'undeveloped', 'under developed' and 'less developed' regions. It was strongly believed in 'Third World Development' circles, that, unless Third World communities were 'developed', they would fall prey to Soviet propaganda.

Over the next forty years, a wide range of national, international and voluntary 'development' organizations were established. Chief amongst these have been international organizations with charters which require them to fund and organize Third World development programs and plans.325

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have had responsibility for advising governments on economic, welfare and development matters, for funding major projects, and for overseeing economic development in the new nations. In the process, they have widely been accused of imposing their own Western priorities and ideological interests on those governments most in need of assistance326.

Fantu Cheru discussed this:

In the words of former President Nyerere of Tanzania, the IMF has become 'the International Ministry of Finance', with enormous leverage to dictate the national policies of Third World governments ...

As in the case of IMF loans, the [World] Bank grants credit only after a borrower-government signs a letter of intent in which it undertakes to comply with certain conditions. These conditions, however, go beyond the traditional IMF recipe and require major institutional reforms ...

The critics of the IMF and the World Bank charge that these institutions represent the interests of Western countries and that their orthodox prescriptions are not appropriate to the circumstances of African countries as they fail to address the root causes of underdevelopment and unequal exchange.
(Cheru 1989, pp. 35-6, 38-9)

The United Nations has provided a forum for interchanges between developed and developing countries. It has also often been accused of being a vehicle for the imposition of First World demands on Third World governments, including the imposition of sets of 'universal principles' relating to the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of governments.

Following the Second World War, with the ideological confrontation of capitalism and communism, Western nations became increasingly concerned with 'human rights', particularly with the right of individuals to freedom of movement and self-expression. No government should have the right to control movement. Of course, only 30 years earlier, Western European colonial powers had no difficulty in imposing severe restrictions on the movement of indigenous peoples within and from their colonies.

Not only were Third World governments pressured to implement such resolutions, the United Nations organizations formed to provide development assistance provided means of leverage to donor countries. Where First World governments disapproved of political processes and developments within the new nations, they very often used these international organizations as forums within which they could voice their concerns and through which they could pressure Third World governments for reform.

Accusations made against the activities of many of these organizations have been that the priorities which have been set, and the programs and projects which have been funded, have reflected First World rather than Third World concerns; and that these programs and the activities of international organizations have very often been motivated by 'human rights' issues which reflect the political concerns of First World nations.

The Indonesian Government, in 1993, spelt out its attitude to such First World pressures:

Human rights questions are essentially ethical and moral in nature. Hence, any approach to human rights questions which is not motivated by a sincere desire to protect these rights but by disguised political or, worse, to serve as a pretext to wage a political campaign against another country, cannot be justified 327.

Given the international tensions of the 'Cold War' period, it is small wonder that the international political concerns of donor nations strongly influenced their development priorities. This led them to use development funding as a means of pressuring governments into endorsing their interests and concerns.

Much of the pressure exerted on post-colonial governments during this period was concerned, not with the material well-being of Third World peoples so much as with ensuring the commitment of governments and people to the ideological biases of the donor nations.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, 'non-alignment' has become anachronistic. Now there is only one highly successful and very dominant ideology (with its variants) in the West, with socialism and communism in disrepute. Those who, in the past, sought to remain nonaligned, now have little option but to accept the ascendancy of capitalism and attempt to reorganize their communities to participate in the rapidly expanding international capitalist system.

Many of them, in the 1980s and 1990s, at World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) instigation, implemented structural adjustment programs (SAPs) to reorient their political and economic organization and activity to neoliberal, free-market requirements. As Jason Oringer and Carol Welch (1998) claimed,

SAPs share a common objective: to move countries away from self-directed models of national development that focus on the domestic market and toward outward-looking development models that stress the importance of complete integration into the dominant global structures of trade, finance, and production. 328.

In the new international climate, no nation could escape involvement in the emerging global communications, financial, enterprise, information and entertainment networks. Nor could they insulate themselves from the deregulative forces which exposed populations to the vagaries of the international marketplace. These gave transnational corporations and organizations increasing influence within Third World national boundaries.

Confusing Third World intra-national tensions with international confrontations Return to Chapter Index

(26/04/17)

As colonial territories, faced with a daunting array of problems and difficulties bequeathed by their erstwhile 'masters', gained independence, they entered a world threatened by the confrontation of two world industrial powers, allied with those erstwhile 'masters' and armed with weapons of mass destruction.

No country was immune from the resulting tensions and from the demands made upon them to support or oppose the Western and Eastern blocs.

While there was no Third World War during this period, there were innumerable 'brush fires' or small wars.

Third World countries, fraught with internal tensions and challenges to central authority, became the target of Cold War rivalries. As regional interests in Third World nations challenged central governments they looked for external support and ways of obtaining weaponry and military expertise. They soon learned the language of international Cold War confrontation and used it very effectively in appealing for backing for their insurrections.

First, convince a Cold War bloc that they were committed to its ideological position. Second, convince them that their opponent was on the side of the opposing bloc. Once done, this would quickly be followed by funding for their activities by the major world players and their allies. This 'funding' was, of course, not 'free'. The costs of the wars were borne by the Third World countries, not by those international players who 'supported' them.

Inevitably, once one side in an internal Third World national conflict received international support of this kind, the other side found itself the recipient of 'military aid' from the opposing bloc. In this way, superpower tensions spilt over into the rest of the world, reclassifying local disputes in Cold War terms and financially crippling the Third World nations involved in the disputes.

During the Cold War period, these reclassified wars were fought in colonial and post-colonial countries, with opponents armed and supported by the two superpowers or their allies. Each conflict was recast as an ideological confrontation between capitalism and communism, proxies for direct conflict between First and Second World players (the superpowers and their allies were only directly involved in three of these wars). Only two of them (in Northern Ireland and Turkey) were not fought on Third World soil.

Because they were insulated from the conflict, this period of worldwide turmoil and bloodshed has often been described by people in Western nations as a prolonged period of peace. That peace has usually been attributed to the balanced build-up of nuclear weapons, which guaranteed the 'mutually assured destruction' (with the appropriate acronym 'MAD') of the two superpowers should they enter into war with each other.329

In Third World nations, however, during the second half of the 20th century, millions of people were killed in wars which were bankrolled and armed by the superpowers and their allies in the name of the ideological confrontation of capitalism and communism.330

This was not a period when newly independent countries could concentrate on their 'development' equitably aided by 'developed' nations and development organizations whose interests in their affairs were wholly benign and positive. This was a period when countries which wished to receive 'aid' from the 'developed' 'First' (capitalist) or 'Second' (communist) worlds had to demonstrate their ideological commitment to the bloc which provided the aid.331

It was a period in which the bloc which did not provide the aid almost certainly attempted to develop and/or maintain festering discontent and rebellion within the country. The aim of this interference in the internal affairs of Third World countries was, through successfully fuelling insurrection, to replace the leadership with people committed to the ideology of the ideological bloc promoting the confrontation.

Throughout the Third World, governments, faced with the enormous task (inherited from colonial powers) of developing the infrastructures of 'modern' 'industrialized' countries, found themselves fighting 'insurgents' or 'rebels' or 'guerrilla movements', spending a great deal of their time, energy and resources on these conflicts.

Kick and Kiefer described the scene in the late 1980s:

In the last few years, developing countries have spent nearly [US] $20 billion per annum on the importation of armaments ...

Militarisation of the Third World coincides with a marked post-war change in the global theatres of war from the developed to the developing countries. In the first half of this century major wars involved direct contention between the prevailing world powers, but since 1945 the structure of international warfare has shifted.

Sivard (1982) identifies 65 major wars and 10,700,000 civilian and battle deaths during 1960-1982, and with only two exceptions (Northern Ireland and Turkey) these wars were entirely fought on the territory of developing countries ...

The rivalry between the capitalist and eastern socialist power blocs has ... been played out in the Third World by the provision of military equipment to local combatants, and less often by direct intervention either by the sponsors themselves or by their proxies.
(Kick & Kiefer 1987, pp. 34, 44)

As Michael Renner described, 'more than $1.2 trillion worth of military equipment has been transferred [to Third World countries] during the past three decades' (1994, p.23).332 It was small wonder that 'development' activities were less than successful, and that Third World governments, by the 1980s, faced bankruptcy and economic ruin.

Dan Connell spelt out some of the consequences:

In 1991, of the 25 largest Third World debtors, 12 were at war, and many were on a war footing ...

From 1970 to 1989, according to UN reports, Third World debt skyrocketed from $68.4 billion to $1,262.8 billion, leaving several nations owing more than they produce in annual income. Today, many countries have been forced to restructure their economies to keep up interest payments, while living standards plunge, urban squalor and rural poverty deepen, and infant and maternal mortality rates climb toward pre-independence levels.

With the best land reserved for export crops and natural resources sold off at discount rates, their ability to feed themselves declines further while environmental degradation proceeds apace. And more money is borrowed to stave off imminent catastrophe.
(Connell 1993, p. 1)

As œGustave Speth, Administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said of Africa in 1994(a):

We conveniently forget Africa's history. We forget that the transatlantic slave trade robbed Africa of about 12 million of its able-bodied men and women. We forget that colonialism which followed the slave trade introduced a system of exploitation of Africa's natural resources to feed the industries of the West.

We forget the 1884/1885 Colonial Conferences of Berlin which crudely Balkanised and divided Africa into geographic areas of control by the West, with scant regard for ethnic groupings. We even forget that during the period of the cold war's geopolitical fight for spheres of influence, Africa became a focal point for the ideology and the arms that today contribute to the havoc we find in Rwanda and Burundi, in Zaire and Angola and Somalia

... Conflict and wars claim resources that would otherwise be spent on education and health and housing and other areas of development.

... A large part of the blame for this trading in death rests with the industrial countries who, while giving aid in the order of $60 billion a year, earn much more in arms sales and otherwise from the estimated $125 billion per year in military expenditures of the developing world.
(Speth 1994(a))

At the very time when post-colonial governments were attempting to establish viable political and administrative institutions in their countries, legitimized by popular acceptance and participation, they were required to develop sophisticated international policies and interactions. They had to balance the geo-political demands of the superpowers with an increasing range of 'development' requirements placed on them by an emerging set of international institutions. The conflicting and contradictory demands to which Third World governments were subjected made long-term, rational planning extremely difficult.

It's Unipolar or Multipolar Hegemony:
Let's All Fight for 'Freedom'Return to Chapter Index

(06/09/22) (09/09/22) (17/09/22) (23/09/22) (17/10/22) (24/10/22) (26/10/22) (28/10/22) (29/10/22) (08/11/22) (10/11/22) (11/11/22) (27/11/22) (01/12/22) (12/12/22) (20/03/23) (21/03/23) (27/03/23) (11/07/23) (13/07/23) (22/07/23) (07/03/24) (29/07/24)

'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun' (œEcclesiastes 1:9 (NIV))

An excellent discussion between Oksana Boyko and Talmiz Ahmad, India's former ambassador to Saudi Arabia insightfully sets the stage for this section. As Boyko sums up,

...One of the worst vestiges of colonialism is that nations start to believe the colonial narrative themselves.

I think in a sense what we've been discussing today is that many of those countries are finally ready to free themselves from all those narratives and to recognize that there's something inherently good and valuable and cherishable in their own history, their own national character and their own manifest destiny because all the nations of the world have something unique and something special to offer - if the international environment supports that...
(Oksana Boyko and Talmiz Ahmad, œThe Great New Deal? Talmiz Ahmad, India's Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, RT: Worlds Apart, 26 March, 2023)

Sergey Kurginyan, in a Rossa Primavera report (July 25, 2024), provided an alternative outcome in which a multipolar world results not in interdependent harmony but in a war of all against all, as nations compete for advantage in an unraveling unipolar world.

According to him, an ideal picture where everyone respects each other's interests, culture and identity can only cause tears of happiness. "But I think that everyone standing here realizes that nothing of this kind will happen," the analyst said, addressing the experts in the studio.

At the same time, Sergey Kurginyan noted that a multipolar world is inevitable due to the weakening of the United States and its "strange" policy.

"Under these conditions, the multipolar world becomes essentially a war of all against all," he said.

The political scientist emphasized that one should not expect a cold war similar to that between the USA and the USSR. He believes that it will be a war "quite different, between some two small African states," which will subsequently split into smaller conflicts.

"We are entering this world. But the only thing I would like to see is that this entry should not be accompanied by excessive hopes that we are approaching harmonization, and I believe that the Russian political leadership considers this exactly in this way,"
(œKurginyan: Multipolar world will generate conflicts at the borders and on Russian territory, Rossa Primavera, July 25, 2024)

The multipolar reality will be shaped by the leaders of sovereign states in the emerging multipolar world. They can, if they so decide, create a world of scavengers: fighting over the spoils of a dying empire.

Or they can choose to enter into a multipolar world shaped by a new vision of humanity's future. A world of leaders who, at last, understand that humanity's future is in their hands and can be shaped cooperatively, to the long-term benefit of all.

In 2022 the first direct conflict (between 'The West' (comprising those nations and their offspring which have over the past five centuries been involved in colonizing the rest of the world) and newly emerging 'peer' powers with the economic and military strength to directly challenge Western hegemony) had begun.

Western apologists and 'experts' were honing their rhetoric in anticipation of another propaganda driven 'Cold War' to suit a new century:

Russia, an aging tyranny, seeks to destroy Ukraine, a defiant democracy. A Ukrainian victory would confirm the principle of self-rule, allow the integration of Europe to proceed, and empower people of goodwill to return reinvigorated to other global challenges. A Russian victory, by contrast, would extend genocidal policies in Ukraine, subordinate Europeans, and render any vision of a geopolitical European Union obsolete.

Should Russia continue its illegal blockade of the Black Sea, it could starve Africans and Asians, who depend on Ukrainian grain, precipitating a durable international crisis that will make it all but impossible to deal with common threats such as climate change.

A Russian victory would strengthen fascists and other tyrants, as well as nihilists who see politics as nothing more than a spectacle designed by oligarchs to distract ordinary citizens from the destruction of the world. This war, in other words, is about establishing principles for the twenty-first century. It is about policies of mass death and about the meaning of life in politics. It is about the possibility of a democratic future....

How good it must feel to have a new, endlessly giving, cold war on which to pontificate:

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2022, Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of the state-run network RT, said that "all of our hope lies in famine." As the skilled propagandist understands, the point of starving Africans and Asians is to create a backdrop for propaganda. As they begin to die, Ukrainians will be scapegoated.
(Timothy Snyder, œUkraine Holds the Future: The War Between Democracy and Nihilism, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2022)

Yes, this is rabid nonsense, but expect more and more of such rhetoric as the confrontation 'matures'!

'The West', with the United States leading the way and directing the policies and 'responsibilities' of Western Europe and its other 'allies', is playing a dangerous game. It seems that it has decided on a 'winner take all' strategy in its war to retain unipolar hegemony.

Obscured by the propaganda (smoke screen for far more serious warmongering), the West is more and more openly arming, training and funding both Ukrainians and mercenaries and steadily escalating the nature of supplied weaponry (this is how it 'managed' its wars in post-colonial nations during the first 'Cold War' - but none of them were nuclear armed peer nations!).

Russian foreign minister Lavrov described the reality:333

Neither Russia nor China (nor any other nation which becomes a target of US warmongering) has any real alternative: The West, as it has throughout its colonial and neo-colonial past, will brook no competitors. As Awolowo described, those who challenge it are faced with a 'choice of one of two roads leading to subjection: defeat or surrender'.

If there can be no alternative, for Russia, to achieving the aims of its 'Special Military Operation' in Ukraine, there can, equally, in the minds of the Washington establishment, be no alternative to preventing Russia from doing so.334

As in Afghanistan, over more than four decades, so in Ukraine, The United States will pursue its objective of weakening and finally dismembering Russia no matter the cost to those being used as proxies. Neither Ukraine nor NATO (and by default, all those nations which have wagered their futures on its ambitions) are anything more than means to Washington's ends. And those ends assume the complete subordination of all other actors to Washington's ambitions.335

Samarajiva put it well (if somewhat hyperbolically):

Nobody deserves it more, but you have to feel bad for Europeans. They're colonized by America and they don't even know it. Europeans are told to blame Russia, China, immigrants and to love the Americans actually fleecing them. America is literally occupying, bombing, and deindustrializing Europe, and taxing the suckers 2% for the privilege. America bombs pipelines in Germany to sell the fools more expensive American gas. America sends Europe's weapons to Ukraine, then forces the Europeans to buy even more expensive replacements. America doesn't protect Europe, it's a protection racket. Europeans are bad people, but you have to feel bad for them. After sucking the world dry for hundreds of years, they're now just the world's biggest suckers....
(Indrajit Samarajiva, œAmerica Has Defeated Europe, indi.ca, March 05, 2024)

Sarotte described the way in which 'NATO Membership' has been employed to keep suppliant nations compliant with the foreign policy objectives of the 'NATO Alliance':336

Confident of the power of 'favors to come' in keeping NATO aspirants loyal no matter what the costs might be, on July 8, 2023 the United States president œBiden said he decided to send Ukraine controversial cluster bombs because Kyiv is 'running out of ammunition'.

For Ukraine, the 'war' with Russia is about 'liberating' its eastern regions from Russian occupation yet, in order to retain Washington's approval, it is apparently prepared to scatter unexploded cluster bombs (which might well œremain active for decades around those territories) and, of course, it earlier œaccepted 'depleted uranium' shells for use in those regions.

With Ukraine converted into a fully compliant vassal state, the United States and NATO command can plan ahead. Paul McLeary explained:337

At a much-hyped two-day NATO 'summit' in Vilnius, Lithuania (July 11-12, 2023), Ukraine found itself still chasing the 'NATO Carrot'. As an Associated Press report explained:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed fresh pledges of weapons and ammunition to fight Russia's invasion along with longer-term security commitments from the West on Wednesday even as he expressed disappointment over the lack of a clear path for his country to join NATO as the alliance wrapped up its annual summit.

"The Ukrainian delegation is bringing home a significant security victory for the Ukraine, for our country, for our people, for our children," he said while flanked by U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders from the Group of Seven most powerful democratic nations.
(Chris Megerian, Lorne Cook and Seung Min Kim, œUkraine wins G7 security pledges but NATO membership remains elusive, ABC News, July 12, 2023)

A TASS report summed it up:

The price of security guarantees from the Group of Seven (G7) is a Ukraine cleared of Ukrainians by Western weapons, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

Earlier, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov expressed concern over the G7's security guarantees, saying that "Kiev will not believe in them until it finds out what their price is."

"The price is not a secret: a Ukraine cleared of Ukrainians by Western weapons but with enough population left to serve NATO troops. There is no need to deport anyone to Western Europe any more because people have moved there themselves," the diplomat wrote on Telegram.
(œUkraine to pay high price for security guarantees from G7, Russian diplomat says: "The price is not a secret: a Ukraine cleared of Ukrainians by Western weapons but with enough population left to serve NATO troops," Maria Zakharova stressed, TASS, July 13, 2023)

With the Northern Hemisphere sweltering under record breaking heat and œenduring a 'weird, wild summer' which 'has brought one extreme event after another - from heat waves to wildfires and floods', human beings, focused on their military ambitions, challenges and fears, continue to ignore reality:

Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to the Ukrainian army's huge losses, depleted Western arsenals and a change in public mood in Ukraine and Europe as the consequences of Kiev's much-trumpeted counteroffensive that yielded no results.

"It is obvious today that the Kiev regime's Western handlers are clearly disappointed over the results of the so-called counteroffensive loudly trumpeted by the current Ukrainian authorities in the previous months," Putin told a meeting with permanent members of the country's Security Council.

"There are no results [of Ukraine's counteroffensive], at least for the time being. Neither huge resources pumped into the Kiev regime nor the deliveries of Western weapons - tanks, artillery, armor and missiles - nor thousands of foreign mercenaries sent there and most actively used in attempts to break through our army's front are of any help," the Russian leader said....

As Putin pointed out, "the endless prolongation of the Ukraine conflict is also advantageous" for the United States.

"Judging from what is happening in real life, the current US ruling elites are doing precisely this. In any case, they are acting following this logic," the Russian leader said.

"Whether this policy corresponds to the true and vital interests of the American people is a big question and certainly a rhetorical question and let them deal with it themselves," the head of state said.

"However, the flames of war are being intensely fueled at present," Putin said. The Russian leader pointed out that the United States "exploits for this purpose the ambitions of leaders of some Eastern European states who have long turned their hatred of Russia and Russophobia into their chief export commodity and an instrument of their internal policy and now want to benefit from the Ukrainian tragedy."
(Military Operation in Ukraine, œPutin points to Kiev's huge losses, depleted Western arsenals in failed counteroffensive, TASS, July 22, 2023)

Ignoring the wild weather in the Northern Hemisphere with recent extremes 'off the charts', if the United States has its way, the world will be embroiled in an interminable Europe-based 'war', stretching through several decades of this century.

Its ambition: exhausting Russia's ability to oppose its will, with Russia and (unfortunate though this might be) Western Europe and Ukraine suffering the fate of so many of the United States' conflict proxies around the world.

The stage has been set for an attempt by those opposed to the increasingly irrational unipolar United States based hegemony to establish a new multipolar world. In the interests of gaining support from all those nations not already committed to one or the other; emissaries of both sides are lobbying them for commitment to their vision for the future of the world.

Nanjala Nyabola has explained:338

In 2022, post-colonial nations, around the world, were once again being co-opted, this time in support of the ideologically driven interests of Western nations and of emergent powers determined to thwart those interests and free the 'Rest of The World' to independent self-development.

But, of course, 'The West' will not go quietly. It has dominated and exploited the rest of the world for more than 500 years and it sees no reason why that dominance should not persist into the indefinite future.

After all, but for 'The West' the rest would still be ignorant barbarians, living from hand to mouth in a primordial jungle because, as Samuel Smiles explained in 1859,

Any class of men that lives from hand to mouth will ever be an inferior class. They will necessarily remain impotent and helpless, hanging on to the skirts of society, the sport of times and seasons. Having no respect for themselves, they will fail in securing the respect of others. In commercial crises, such men must inevitably "go to the wall." Wanting that husband power which a store of savings, no matter how small, invariably gives them, they will be at every man's mercy, and, if possessed of right feelings, they cannot but regard with fear and trembling the future possible fate of their wives and children.

"The world," once said Mr. Cobden to the working men of Huddersfield,

has always been divided into two classes - those who have saved, and those who have spent - the thrifty and the extravagant.

The building of all the houses, the mills, the bridges, and the ships, and the accomplishment of all other great works which have rendered man civilized and happy, has been done by the savers, the thrifty; and those who have wasted their resources have always been their slaves.

It has been the law of nature and of Providence that this should be so; and I were an imposter if I promised any class that they would advance themselves if they were improvident, thoughtless, and idle.

While The West has, since WW2, learned discretion in showing how they really view those in 'developing' countries, many still consider them simple folks, easily misled by those who would exploit them and lead them astray. The West, having demonstrated to them the wonderful advantages of the March of Compound Interest and brought them "progress" and "civilization", still has that responsibility which they accepted long ago: to complete their mission, to bring them into the light of civilization and protect them from the unscrupulous.

In 2023 (the 20th anniversary of the West's invasion of Iraq) they believed they had found a way not only to discredit those leading the movement to establish a new multipolar world but also to bring Vladimir Putin and his henchmen to justice for 'crimes' committed in Ukraine:

[On] 17 March 2023, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court ("ICC" or "the Court") issued warrants of arrest for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine: Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Ms Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.

Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, born on 7 October 1952, President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, (i) for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute), and (ii) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control, pursuant to superior responsibility (article 28(b) of the Rome Statute).
(Press Release, œSituation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, International Criminal Court, 17 March 2023)

The Neoliberal West has made an artform out of repurposing international institutions to serve their own needs. The ICC is 'influenced' to issue warrants for the arrest of those who have fallen out of favor with Western governments and influential Western organizations.

As in this case, very often no specific charges are laid, and, as also in this case, the charges are directed at individuals and organizations in nations which are neither members of the court nor under its jurisdiction.

Despite internationally recognized egregious war crimes committed by the United States and its 'Coalition of the Willing' in Iraq, not a single individual or organization has been subjected to ICC warrants!

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova summed it up:

The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view... Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it.

It really is past time that the hegemonic imposition of Western interests on the rest of the world was countered by enabling excluded nations' involvement in international governance power structures.

Mo Ibrahim has explained the problem for 'Africa':

Today, Africa still exists at the margins of the global order, largely excluded from international institutions and treated as a basket case to be fixed. The current multilateral system, created at the end of World War II, does not effectively represent or serve the present world. Almost everyone agrees with this assessment, but the international community keeps kicking the can down the road. A fresh look at the mission and the governance of institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund is overdue.

Take the UN Security Council, which has been rendered impotent by the veto powers of its five permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. None of these countries is keen to give up its unfair privileges, even if that means crippling a vital institution. All can act with impunity and offer protection to their client states, allowing atrocities to go unpunished and shielding dictators in Africa and elsewhere from scrutiny. This state of global governance is unacceptable.

The G-7 and G-20 groups of major economies are also failing Africa. Understandably, no African countries are members of the former and just one, South Africa, is included in the latter. But unlike the European Union, the African Union does not get a seat at either table. It is occasionally invited to dinner but never into the meeting room. This treatment has enormous consequences for Africa, which has little say in the setting of international standards that affect everything from fighting corruption to financing development to mitigating the effects of climate change. Debates and decisions on these and other issues would be fairer and more efficient if the G-7 and G-20 didn't simply dictate to Africa but treated it as an equal partner.

Africans have been asking for more cooperation from the West as they seek to battle corruption. After all, funds stolen from the continent nearly always end up in Western banks. North American and European countries need to establish public registries that identify those who own or benefit from secretive, anonymous companies. Yet they have resisted doing so, despite regularly haranguing Africans about corruption....
(Mo Ibrahim, œAfrica's Past Is Not Its Future: How the Continent Can Chart Its Own Course, Foreign Affairs, November 10, 2022)

The problem for nations excluded from key international fora is that most of those fora are focused on, as Ibrahim put it, 'major economies' concerns and so most African (and many other) nations fail to qualify for membership, being 'occasionally invited to dinner but never into the meeting room'.

Attempting to include marginalized nations in those 'major economy' fora will not make them any less marginalized.

A Global Times editorial illustrates this problem:

China has expressed its support to include the AU [African Union] in the G20, a mechanism proven effective in global governance, because it is willing to increase Africa's influence in the international arena. Beijing is also willing to work with more African countries to push for more equality and inclusiveness in multilateral frameworks, such as the G20.

Even though Washington will also voice its support for AU membership in the G20 as Beijing has done, the logic behind it is entirely different: While the latter emphasizes cooperation and achieving win-win results with Africa, the former still highlights competition and confrontation, particularly with China, on the continent.
(Editorial, œUS' support for AU joining G20 empty pledge aimed at hindering China, Global Times, December 11, 2022)

Excluded nations whose inclusion in major fora is 'supported' by 'major economies' will remain marginalized even if they are granted 'right to attend privileges'. It is time to move to more relevant foci, requiring 'major economies' to accept that their classification as 'major economies' is largely a consequence of exploiting both resources and peoples around the world.

The world is facing burgeoning environmental problems stemming directly from the activities of those 'major economies'. It is time for nations to focus on means of fast-reducing the negative impacts of 'major economy' activities. Those 'major economy' nations should be made directly accountable to all nations impacted by their activities and major world fora should be focused on that concern.

If 'African' (and any other regional) peoples are to be 'freed' to unhindered self-development and empowered within the wider world, there is a need for a multipolar reality in which military and economic power are not seen as virtues but as threats to the wellbeing of humanity. The rights and responsibilities of those empowered regional groupings of nations in monitoring and limiting the activities of the powerful should be the prime focus of 'international fora'.

The focus of major fora must be on holding 'major economies' accountable for the damage they are doing - and that accounting should be to major regional groupings of nations impacted by their activities.

It's time for a New World Order Return to Chapter Index

(02/04/23) (16/04/23) (30/05/23) (12/06/23) (17/06/23) (04/07/23) (06/07/23) (30/07/23) (02/08/23) (01/10/23) (03/10/23) (07/10/23) (20/02/24) (19/03/24) (30/03/24) (09/04/24) (12/04/24) (24/04/24) (02/05/24) (18/05/24) (25/05/24) (01/06/24)

In the face of horrendous atrocities perpetrated by Israel, reminiscent of long-whitewashed atrocities by colonizing Western nations in preceding centuries, US politicians with some vestige of non-sociopathic empathy for the plight of those on the receiving end of it all are speaking out.

This is far too little and far too late, but at least politicians like Bernie Sanders are beginning to realize that the genocidal behavior of Israel is unacceptable.

As Sanders has put it,

A sad fact about the politics of Washington is that some of the most important issues facing the United States and the world are rarely debated in a serious manner. Nowhere is that more true than in the area of foreign policy. For many decades, there has been a "bipartisan consensus" on foreign affairs. Tragically, that consensus has almost always been wrong. Whether it has been the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the overthrow of democratic governments throughout the world, or disastrous moves on trade, such as entering the North American Free Trade Agreement and establishing permanent normal trade relations with China, the results have often damaged the United States' standing in the world, undermined the country's professed values, and been disastrous for the American working class.

It has taken him a long time to admit that Israel

...is waging a campaign of total war and destruction against the Palestinian people, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands - including thousands of children - and the starvation of hundreds of thousands more in the Gaza Strip.339

Accepting United States' complicity in it all, Sanders tells us all that 'A Revolution in American Foreign Policy: replacing Greed, Militarism, and Hypocrisy With Solidarity, Diplomacy, and Human Rights' is overdue.

It is time for the 'rest of the world' to closely scrutinize Western performance in terms similar to those the West has used as justification for interfering in the internal affairs of non-Western nations and communities.

'The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China on Wednesday [May 29, 2024] released a report on human rights violations in the United States in 2023 340.

As their summary of the report's findings says:

The human rights situation in the United States continued to deteriorate in 2023. In the United States, human rights are becoming increasingly polarized. While a ruling minority holds political, economic, and social dominance, the majority of ordinary people are increasingly marginalized, with their basic rights and freedoms being disregarded....

Bernie Sanders' concern for the state of American Foreign Policy in this third decade of the 21st Century needs to be matched by similar concern for the human rights profile within the nation itself. The United States of America is, indeed, unravelling, both as an international hegemon and as a coherent democracy.

A Scottish aphorism sums up the likelihood of any real change in United States foreign or domestic policy this century:

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride!

With privatization and corporatization driving United States' domestic and foreign policies, there is little hope of any meaningful change happening in this century. The best the rest of the world can hope for is that, with the center of Western Capitalism, in this century, heading toward a chaotic, dystopic future, it will refrain from futile attempts at imposing half-baked 'regime change' on others.

We begin this topic with the way in which Western privatization 'experts' set about privatizing the Russian Federation in the 1990s. It was a project that, as Janine Wedel described, was true to the spirit of Western Colonialism.

'The West' has appropriated and 'privatized' resources around the world over more than 500 years and obfuscated their activity by telling the 'natives' that they were 'developing' them. Similarly, the economic 'reform' (i.e. 'development') of Russia was focused on appropriating and 'privatizing' the resources of the Russian Federation, securing them in the 'asset portfolios' of the 'super-rich' 341.

After seven years of economic "reform" financed by billions of dollars in U.S. and other Western aid, subsidized loans and rescheduled debt, the majority of Russian people find themselves worse off economically.

The privatization drive that was supposed to reap the fruits of the free market instead helped to create a system of tycoon capitalism run for the benefit of a corrupt political oligarchy that has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars of Western aid and plundered Russia's wealth.
(Janine R. Wedel, œThe Harvard Boys Do Russia: After seven years of economic "reform" financed by billions of dollars in U.S., The Nation, May 14, 1998)

Adrian Campbell spelt out the 1990s consequences for Russian peoples:

Massive economic dislocation occurred as Soviet economic ties were severed, a market economy was created and shock therapy accompanied by mass privatisation.

The social impact was immense. Life expectancy fell, with up to five million excess adult deaths in Russia in 1991-2001, birth rates collapsed and both of these trends were compounded by widespread crime and trafficking. These negative effects were concentrated in periods of economic crisis in 1991-94 and 1998-99.

Sharply rising inequality and the emergence of a new wealthy class, including some leading reformers, meant that the term "democrat" had become a term of abuse as early as 1992.
(Adrian Campbell, œThe wild decade: how the 1990s laid the foundations for Vladimir Putin's Russia, The Mandarin, July 03, 2020)

It is time for a new world order:

A world in which sovereign 'nations' and their varied peoples are able to forge their own futures, informed by their own historically forged 'realities'.342

A world in which the strong accept their interdependent responsibility for guaranteeing the weak the freedom needed to be themselves, not a distorted and dysfunctional version of the realities of the strong.

A world in which all nations and governments respect and accept reciprocal responsibility for ensuring the unmolested freedom of others to be themselves!

One can but hope that, this time round, existing and 'would-be' leaders of post-colonial nations will not succumb to the temptation to indulge in weapons purchases and alignment with those intent on exploiting their peoples and environments! It's time for the world to focus on the looming disasters awaiting it, not engage in fruitless wars and self-destructive antagonisms.

How desperately we need the wisdom of the non-aligned!343

Unity in diversity is used as an expression of harmony and unity between dissimilar individuals or groups344.

In a speech at Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1953, India's first defence minister V K Menon laid down five principles that would be the cornerstone of Non-Aligned Movement policy.

Post-colonial India has used the concept of 'unity in diversity' as means of justifying the unity (at the national level) of diverse regions with their own historical backgrounds.

Zhang Lihua, in a 2013 explanation of the Chinese understanding of 'Unity in Diversity': 'Harmony without Uniformity', put it like this:

According to the concept of harmony, the universe unites diversity...There are many examples in which differences complement each other in nature and society. Uniting diversity is the basis for the generation of new things.

Confucius said, "The gentleman aims at harmony, and not at uniformity..." Thus, a gentleman may hold different views, but he does not blindly follow others. Instead, he seeks to coexist harmoniously with them.
(Zhang Lihua, œChina's Traditional Cultural Values and National Identity, Window into China, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 21, 2013)345

Between nations, as between individuals, in a multipolar world of 'sovereign equals', Confucius' observation must be central.

To paraphrase Confucius: In a multipolar world of sovereign equals, harmony can only be achieved in participating nations which see themselves as fundamentally unified, sharing a present and a future founded on a true recognition of their individual and collective responsibility for ensuring humanity's indivisible unity.

Sovereign nations will hold different understandings of the world, different ambitions within that world and truly unique histories, but they must, nonetheless, determinedly strive for harmony, neither blindly following others nor insisting that others follow them. Instead, focused on harmony, they will seek to coexist harmoniously with each other.

A Global Times editorial entitled 'Modi's remarks on China-India relations are thought-provoking', describes India's astute balancing of relations between three major nations346:

Between nations, as between individuals, in a multipolar world of sovereign equals, each must aim at harmony, and not at uniformity. They may hold different views, but they do not blindly follow others. Instead, they seek to coexist harmoniously with them - while remaining true to their own historically forged understandings, attitudes and interests.

Over the past 70 years (and arguably for much longer than that) the term 'democracy' has been steadily degraded. It no longer means the consensus rule of 'the majority' in an interdependent world of reciprocal responsibility.

In a zero-sum world of independent individuals focused on self-gratification, it has become the rule of the strong over the weak; of the rich over the poor; of those who control the 'media' over those with no voice. In the process, democracy, as the cooperative interdependence of diverse groupings (summed up as 'unity in diversity'), has lost all relevance.

The exercise of 'authority' has been displaced by the exercise of 'power'. Those who gain 'power' (whether through the 'ballot box' or through 'major economy' status) use that power to enhance and further promote their own independent self-interest in a 'devil take the hindermost' world of unregulated self-promotion.

Sovereignty requires independent control of currency creation Return to Chapter Index

(09/07/24)

The world is changing and the hegemonic domination of 'major economies' is unravelling,

To repeat oneself; we are, hopefully, emerging into a multipolar reality in which sovereign 'nations' and their varied peoples are able to forge their own futures, informed by their own historically forged 'realities'; a world in which the strong accept their interdependent responsibility for guaranteeing the weak the freedom needed to be themselves, not a distorted and dysfunctional version of the realities of the strong; a world in which all nations and governments respect and accept reciprocal responsibility for ensuring the unmolested freedom of others to be themselves!

In any sovereign capitalist country, whoever controls the purse strings controls the nation!

No nation which surrenders control of credit creation and management is truly sovereign.

It should be a world of sovereign 'equals'; empowered to realize the possibilities of their own financial sovereignty. A world of nations able to fully realize the advantages of their separate sovereign national banks, able to engage in bilateral credit swap agreements with other nations based on respect for each others' right to create and manage their own national currencies and sovereign bank accounts.

The inter-national use of national currencies, in 2023, is gathering momentum. A TASS report explained:347

Bilateral credit swaps and the use of national currencies in settling cross-border financial transactions should become 'normal' practice. And, equally, national governments should learn and exercise the advantages (and responsibilities) of using their own fiat currencies in funding their internal financial 'needs'.

The powers of international organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should be severely curtailed and redefined in support of such developments. If that is not possible, they should be dissolved as anachronistic institutions with all debts owed by debtor nations cancelled in the process. Those debts have, over many years, been used to usurp the financial sovereignty of nations which received their 'help'. It is time to wipe the slate clean and start afresh, based on sovereign financial independence.

The world does not need - and should not tolerate - the existence of a hegemonically controlled 'super currency' to which trading nations must be granted access in order to trade.

Regional 'currency unions' (originally established as means of both 'overseeing' and legitimizing post-colonial regional currencies in the 1940s to 70s), tied to, and 'legitimized' (in various ways) by Western monetary authorities, face similar dangers of forfeiting financial sovereignty to those Western monetary authorities348.

Monetary unions such as the Eurozone impose monetary policies on participating national governments and so distort national financial controls. Matthieu Bordenave, in an essay entitled 'Should we cancel national debt owned by the ECB ?', has described the resulting 'national deficit' problems of participating nations:

For over a decade, the European Central Bank has implemented unconventional monetary measures known as "Quantitative Easing" in response to the 2008 crisis, the euro crisis, and the Covid-19 crisis. These measures were necessary to prevent an economic collapse and a new crisis of public debt in Europe. However, now the member states must repay significant amounts to their respective central bank.

There are only two options for re- paying public debt: either by borrowing the same amount again (by rolling over the stock of debt) or by achieving a budget surplus that allows for repayment without additional borrowing. In other words, they either become increasingly dependent on financial markets or implement austerity measures. Another possibility is to rely on either economic growth or inflation, but this would require substantial investments and wage increases, which in turn means borrowing more in order to spend more. Attempting to separate growth from debt, as desired by Bruno Le Maire , is like trying to fill a bathtub without turning on the tap (Giraud et al.).
(Matthieu Bordenave, œShould we cancel national debt owned by the ECB ?, Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt, October 03, 2023)

Sean Hagan and Hugh Bredenkamp, in a 2018 IMF Blog posting, provide an introduction to existing currency unions and address some of the potential sovereignty problems associated with membership of such unions. As they say:

There are currently four currency unions in the world - the Central African Economic and Monetary Community, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, the European Monetary Union, and the West African Economic and Monetary Union - all of which delegate monetary policy and, to varying degrees, exchange rate and financial sector policies to union-level institutions.

Currency unions have long been part of the global financial landscape, but they now account for over 15 percent of the global economy. In the absence of established guidance, our engagement with currency union institutions during past programs has been somewhat ad hoc. By clarifying how adjustment programs should be designed in the future, we hope to foster more robust programs and promote more evenhanded treatment....
(Sean Hagan and Hugh Bredenkamp, œMonetary unions A Framework for Currency Unions and IMF Lending, IMF Blog, March 16, 2018)

In a 'post-colonial' world finally breaking the shackles of Western hegemonic manipulation of post-colonial financial and economic sovereignty, currency unions can remain a perennial threat to the truly sovereign independence of participating nations. Those nations involved in such unions need to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of participation if they are to rid themselves of the last vestiges of colonialism.

Yes, this is a utopian future and reality is never utopian - but, unless we dream of such a reality and aspire to it, we will end up in another version of the dystopian world of unregulated capitalism.

Where there is no vision the people perish.

The Euro-centric 'world order' which has dominated the world over the past several centuries has had, and continues to have, a number of distinct and peculiar features which underpin and drive Western dominance.

First and foremost is the militarily backed search for and appropriation of 'useful' resources to feed Western capitalist development.

This has taken the form of privately controlled but publicly legitimized forms of colonialism, with the rest of the world required to accept and live within a Westernized political, legal, financial and economic reorganization of their lives and societies.

Throughout the world, 'development' has meant Westernization. Indigenous understandings of the world and concomitant social, political and economic processes and forms have been 'superseded'; declared to be 'anachronous' and 'backward' ways of life which must, inevitably, be displaced by those required in any truly 'developed' society.

The world of the 21st century must be 'Western' or remain 'undeveloped'.

If there is to be a 'new world order', it is presumed that, inevitably, it will be Western in form and focus. And, of course, given that the world has indeed been reorganized into Western style 'nation-states', legitimized by Western style 'boundaries', public institutions and forms of resource and commodity ownership and exploitation, that presumption is indeed 'reasonable'!

Those determined to live in a world which reflects the real diversity of 'realities', polities and social structures of peoples around the world, have embarked upon a Sisyphean enterprise.

But, they have made a good beginning!

The emerging and embryonic Shanghai Cooperation Organization349 has, indeed, declared itself to be an organization dedicated to asserting and supporting the true sovereignty of each member state.

Each state is presumed to have the right to 'develop' as an independent yet interdependent entity with the right to determine its own nature and destiny within an umbrella of nations with similar intent. Within that framework, states will support each other in developing both internal and inter-nation infrastructures and inter-governmental support processes.

The vision, while necessarily non-directive and embryonic, is a bold and imaginative one. If there is indeed a benign supra-human intelligence upon which we can all rely, one can but hope that it will impart true wisdom and foresight to those shaping this new beginning for humanity. We can but pray that it will not be derailed by either the inevitable Western militarized reaction or the looming environmental crises facing humanity.

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, explained Russia's position350 on all this:

The world is entering a decade of tumult as the pursuit of a more just world order clashes with the arbitrary hegemony of the collective West, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, addressing the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

Putin's speech ranged from biodiversity to "cancel culture," the nature of what the West has to offer and Russia's response, followed by hours of answering audience questions....

In a truly democratic multipolar world, any society, culture and civilization should have the right to choose its own path and socio-political system. If the US and Europe have that right, so should everyone else. Russia also has it, "and no one will ever be able to dictate to our people what kind of society we should build and on what principles."

"Above all, we believe that the new world order should be based on law and justice, be free, authentic and fair," the Russian president said.

"The future world order is being formed before our eyes. And in this world order, we must listen to everyone, take into account every point of view, every nation, society, culture, every system of worldviews, ideas and religious beliefs, without imposing a single truth on anyone, and only on this basis, understanding our responsibility for the fate of our peoples and the planet, to build a symphony of human civilization."
(Vladimir Putin, 'œNo one can sit out the coming storm': Putin's milestone Valdai speech, RT, 27 October, 2022)
(Enlglish transcript of Putin's speech: œMeeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Office of the President of Russia, October 27, 2022)

And, in a joint declaration encompassing these and a range of related issues, Presidents Xi and Putin, on May 6th 2024, issued a 'œJoint Statement by the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China on Deepening Relations of Comprehensive Partnership and Strategic Cooperation, Entering a New Era in the Context of the 75th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the Two Countries'.

A lot has happened in two years and in this statement they have summed up not only what has happened but also the firm intent of both nations to ensure the establishment of 'a truly democratic multipolar world, [in which] any society, culture and civilization [will] have the right to choose its own path and socio-political system' with the full support of all other nations intent on living in this new multipolar world of truly independent nations bound together in an interdependent world of sovereign equals.

In 2024, Elizabeth Economy, in an alert to the Western World, warned her readers of the 'danger' of such 'brash, self-congratulatory proclamations' as those being made by Russia's President Putin and China's 'confrontational "Wolf Warrior" style of diplomacy':

By now, Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambition to remake the world is undeniable. He wants to dissolve Washington's network of alliances and purge what he dismisses as "Western" values from international bodies. He wants to knock the U.S. dollar off its pedestal and eliminate Washington's chokehold over critical technology. In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology. China will no longer have to fight for leadership. Its centrality will be guaranteed.

To hear Xi tell it, this world is within reach. At the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs last December, he boasted that Beijing was (in the words of a government press release) a "confident, self-reliant, open and inclusive major country," one that had created the world's "largest platform for international cooperation" and led the way in "reforming the international system." He asserted that his conception for the global order - a "community with a shared future for mankind" - had evolved from a "Chinese initiative" to an "international consensus," to be realized through the implementation of four Chinese programs: the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative.
(Elizabeth Economy, œChina's Alternative Order: And What America Should Learn From It, Foreign Affairs, April 23, 2024)

For all those Western 'experts' and commentators, willing and able to hear and understand, Confucius explained:

The gentleman aims at harmony, and not at uniformity...

Individuals, communities and peoples, holding different understandings of the world and different ways of interacting with one another, should not blindly follow others. Instead, they should seek to coexist harmoniously with them.

Humanity is still evolving, and will continue to do so for as long as it survives as a species. And, that evolution, if humanity is to escape the consequences of its darker urges, must be toward a species-wide empathic harmony of interdependent communities and peoples.

What Elizabeth Economy describes as 'a long-term competition' between a 'community with a shared future for mankind', and the 'system the United States supports' is a consequence of fundamentally different understandings of 'reality' held by an individualistic West and an interdependently organized world which has, over many years, been subjected to Western invasion, exploitation and reorganization.

Let's, for God's sake, celebrate difference! (If such a Being (or panoply of Beings) exists, we can be sure that It delights in difference! Whatever else evolution affirms, it certainly affirms that!).

We should never assume that anyone has the right, or obligation, to change another nation's form of government or to replace its leadership because it does not conform to the requirements of some 'ideal' of an interfering nation or organization.

Nor is it the right of any person or government to sponsor internal protest in another nation (whether through propaganda, provocateurs, weapons supply or anything else!). Nations have both a right and a duty to sort out their own internal problems without the interference of Western - or any other - governments or agencies. As Vladimir Putin insisted, 'any society, culture and civilization should have the right to choose its own path and socio-political system'.351

The long-held belief in Western nations that they have perfected a system of government which is 'best' for 'all nations' is, as we've seen, nonsense!

Claims that, while Western nations live in a 'garden', the rest of the world is an untamed 'jungle' that needs their 'help' is also hubristic nonsense.

Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, of the European Union spelled out Western Europe's blinkered (mis)understanding of what is happening: around the world:352

In a later keynote speech in Bruges at the College of Europe, Borrell provided a graphic picture of his (and the Western World's long-held) 'understanding' of the nature of the relationship between the West and the Rest of the world:

Thank you to all of you, and congratulations to all of you for having the extraordinary chance of studying here, in Bruges at the College of Europe. I am sure you are aware of how lucky you are.

Here, Bruges is a good example of the European garden. Yes, Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build - the three things together. And here, Bruges is maybe a good representation of beautiful things, intellectual life, wellbeing.

The rest of the world - and you know this very well, Federica - is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners should take care of it, but they will not protect the garden by building walls. A nice small garden surrounded by high walls in order to prevent the jungle from coming in is not going to be a solution. Because the jungle has a strong growth capacity, and the wall will never be high enough in order to protect the garden.

The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.

Yes, this is my most important message: we have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world.
(Josep Borrell, œEuropean Diplomatic Academy: Opening remarks by High Representative Josep Borrell at the inauguration of the pilot programme, The Diplomatic Service of the European Union, 13 October, 2022)

Apparently those living in post-colonial 'jungles' are to be blessed with more of Western Europe's gardening activities!

There are regions around the world which, like 'The Balkans', have long been considered peripheral, semi-cleared and semi-cultivated œ'less-developed' territories ripe for exploitation. Neocolonialism is alive and well in the minds of those who inhabit the 'gardens' of capitalism!

Houènou œ(1924) put it well:

We understand nothing of the egotistic and barbarous aims sought by certain civilized people who believe that civilization can only reach its zenith by ignoring original laws, and by debasing and enslaving men who have the natural right to live, to evolve, and to attain the full expression of their being...

...The problem arose at the moment of the discovery of America when Europeans intoxicated by glory, adventure, and above all by rapine, sought to conquer new territories which did not belong to them.

They destroyed the aborigines - exterminated them! Then, terrified at the void they had created around them and being themselves incapable of labor, they turned to Africa for workmen. It was Africa that furnished contingents for penal labor - this Africa with whose unhappy history you are unacquainted but which some day, one of her sons will outline for you in darts of fire, - a monument of shame for that civilization of which you boast.

'Africa', the Motherland of Humanity is awakening. It is emerging from a battered and abused 500 year past of genocide and exploitation to a new realization of its own inherent worth, of the incredible 300 thousand year old history of its peoples.

It is relearning the value of the amazing diversity of its societies and communities, of their historically forged melding with and husbanding of their natural environments.

And it will need to relearn the vital importance of patience, of calmly and deliberately fashioning a future based in a profound unity of its societies and peoples. A unity capable of celebrating the long-evolved and tested diversity of those communities in adapting to the realities of their various environments353.

Vladimir Putin reminded the world of an old African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together"

Attempting to emulate 'The West' will no doubt bring short-lived material 'prosperity' through exploiting and abusing Africa's abundant social, environmental and natural resources - just as it has in 'The West'. But, it will be at the expense of sacrificing that unique diversity which is Africa's invaluable heritage and humanity's last best hope in this new world of 'Western' delivered climate disaster and world-wide pollution.

'African Leaders', young and old, mature and immature, are confronted by a future which could well prove disastrous not only for their continent but for the whole world. They will have to draw on all the resources of their own unique history, experience and wisdom if they are to ensure that promised future of profound unity safeguarding an incredible 300 thousand year-long evolution of human societal diversity.

May The Force indeed be with those involved in this new human endeavor. But, whatever they do, one can but hope that they will not appeal to those who delivered the current mess to them for guidance.

'The West' can only deliver what they've already given the continent of Africa in the past!

Problems of nation-building Return to Chapter Index

This is what 'The West' delivered not only to 'Africa' but to the rest of the invaded world through 500 years of domination and oppression.

The 'nations' created by colonial powers usually directly reflected the geographical territories which they had ruled. They usually incorporated a variety of ethnic groupings, sometimes traditionally opposed to one another, sometimes more closely tied to other communities not included within the national boundaries, and sometimes opposed through the activities of the colonial powers themselves 354.

In almost all colonial territories, a small Western educated minority, very often representatives of a number of separate ethnic groupings in the colony, had been groomed to consider themselves members of the middle-classes of the colonizing powers. Houènou œ(1924) described his own attachment to France:

To begin with, I must completely absolve France from the policies of some of her children. We who have been reared in the Motherland - we know her, we love her, and we have unshakeable confidence in her.

But, I regret to say, though I say it fearlessly, that the representatives whom she sends to her colonies fail to perform their duties. More than that, they betray the interests of France and compromise her future. They betray the interests of Africa, and thereby compromise the future of a people who has the right to exist.

My sympathy, my affection, my love for France cannot be doubted; for in the critical hours of 1914, without compulsion of any sort, I assumed spontaneously the duty of all citizens and exposed my life like all Frenchmen.

The sense of inclusive, co-operative identity between middle ranking people preceded the establishment of most Western European nation-states. The small educated minority from the colonies were educated to identify with those middle ranking people.

However, as Houènou claimed, they often felt they had been tolerated rather than whole-heartedly included in middle class company, "by special favor and grudgingly made, citizens" of the colonizing power. In many ways they were neither fully accepted as citizens of the 'Motherland', nor, any longer, closely identified in their own minds with people in the colonies from which they had been taken.

The nationalism of most Third World nations consisted in the desire of these Western educated individuals to validate themselves by taking over the reins of government from colonial administrators. This was coupled with a strong desire on the part of the populace to be freed from foreign domination.

In most new nations, the post-colonial nation-state preceded the emergence of nationalism amongst the vast majority of the population. Those who inherited government, inherited a responsibility which few colonial administrations had accepted - they would have to find ways in which to develop and maintain a sense of nationalism amongst the diverse peoples of their national territories.

The unity of a colony was, to the colonial power, a consequence of its administration, and did not require the active endorsement of the indigenous populations. The post-colonial nation-state, however, as a result of very strong international pressures and a presumption of the universal applicability of Western democratic forms, needed to receive its legitimation from the population.

Post-colonial governments, unlike the colonial administrations which preceded them, needed to be ratified through the identification of their populations with them as legitimate and unifying authorities within national territories.

Colonial powers had provided administration, and administrative representatives down to the local village and household levels in the form of magistrates, police, wardens, and council officers. They had imposed these structures and authorities on the colonial populations. They had assumed, but had not felt any need to engender, the commitment of villagers to their supervision.

In contrast, post-colonial governments needed to engender in their populations a sense of 'belonging' to the nation, rather than to a particular region, ethnic group or clan. Governments, therefore, had to intrude into the lives of their constituents in ways not contemplated by most colonial authorities.

Bice Maiguashca explained it well:

As for the Third World, during the 1950s and 1960s most of the newly created states concentrated their attention on establishing political centralisation and fostering national integration. As a consequence, most indigenous peoples, who had enjoyed a relative degree of autonomy during the colonial period, now found themselves under the authority of local elites who were driven by the imperative of 'nation-building' and who sought to consolidate their precarious hold on power through any means available to them ...
(Maiguashca 1994, p. 361)

National governments, handed control by colonial authorities, had to intrude into the identities and self-definitions of relatively insular regions, ethnic groups and clans. They had to attempt to inculcate new perceptions and understandings, through which people would primarily define themselves as members of the nation, so as to weld them into a coherent whole.

They had to begin 'nation-building' in a way not confronted by their colonial predecessors.

Those who inherited the reins of governmental power usually saw their task as one of establishing a European-style 'nation-state' 355. The motives for support by the majority of the population however, usually had less to do with the establishment of a nation-state than with the displacement of those who had imposed such ideas upon them.

This new, and often very intrusive, involvement of national political and governmental activity in local and regional affairs created mounting tension in many regions. In many countries the resentment generated by such intrusion led to independence claims by regions and ethnic groups.

Decentralization of Political and Governmental organization Return to Chapter Index

Most colonial authorities, though claiming to be aware of the strong divisive forces which existed within the territories they were handing over to indigenous elites, counseled new governments to devolve political and administrative authority to regions. This decentralization of political and governmental organization and activity, it was hoped, would dampen demands for secession from the new nation.

This emphasis on devolution echoed conventional wisdom in political and economic development circles. In order to ensure grassroots involvement in political and economic development, it was believed necessary to involve people as directly as possible in the responsibilities of government 356.

Premdas and Steeves (1984) spelt out the rationale clearly:

If decolonisation means anything, it would at least entail the dismantling and re-orienting of the inherited bureaucracy rendering government administrative behavior subservient to community will. In essence, decolonisation at the grassroots becomes more of a reality where decision making and execution do not remain the monopoly or preserve of civil servants but rather are controlled by elected local councils.

The overdeveloped centre must be deconcentrated to the periphery; a meaningful measure of autonomy in political decision making should be devolved to the vast majority of citizens who are rural dwellers ...
(Premdas & Steeves 1984, p. 2)

However, the problems confronting new nations could not be so easily overcome. In most countries, devolution of governmental responsibilities to provincial and regional governments simply multiplied the problems associated with governing through poorly legitimized political structures. A further level of inefficient, ineffective bureaucracy and political office was added to a structure which was quickly to come under real strain 357.

Once regions gained political voice of their own, it became easier for regional interests to argue for secession, centered on the existing regional political and bureaucratic structures. Many post-independence separation movements focused their rebellions through taking control of provincial and regional governments in their areas.

Post-colonial governments faced challenges to their autonomy from several directions:

Benjamin Barber and Regine Temam (1992) claimed that internationalization and tribalism in the 1990s were still, and perhaps even more successfully, undermining the traditional political institutions of the nation-state.

On the one hand, global economic and ecological forces were requiring increasing integration and uniformity in the world, with deregulation making national borders permeable. On the other hand, nations were being threatened by 'resurgent, conflicting nationalities and tribal enmities' (Barber & Temam 1992, p. 13).

The leadership and internal organization of regional and ethnic groups and clans incorporated within the new nations had very often been warped, disrupted and weakened during the colonial period. Those (primarily Western educated elites) who sought power in the new nations found in those groups fertile soil for their own ambitions. They often attempted to subvert and/ or displace 'traditional' leadership in order to establish personal support-bases within their own ethnic and regional communities through which they could gain control of the national government 358.

Ikejiani described the scene in Nigeria in 1964, three years after gaining independence:

It is glaringly evident that the distinguishing mark in Nigerian public life presently is not a man's political philosophy, or religion, or party, or education, or wealth, or personal qualities, but in the last analysis his tribe or origin.

Nigerians carry these tribal thoughts into all aspects of their daily life. They carry them into their friendships, into their occupations, into their loyalties and into their prejudices.

Politics in Nigeria not only has a regional cleavage, subtle and most grossly evident, but also clan connotation. There is a deep struggle for tribal superiority as well.

... It is certainly beyond dispute that in our factories and shops, in government offices, in corporations and in our various institutions, appointments and promotions are made, in many cases, on tribal and clan calculations.
(Ikejiani 1964, p. 122)

Rather than a shared 'nationalism' amongst the populace, the leaders of new nations found that colonial administration had done little to weaken ethnic and clan loyalties and identities. It had been just as ineffective in establishing any sense of shared identity between the disparate communities within national territorial boundaries.

Most colonial people interacted with the colonial structures at the local level and seldom needed to think in terms of an over arching 'national' bureaucracy. In consequence, for most people, pre-colonial political allegiances, while distorted by colonial experience, were still potent. Chukwudum Okolo put it well:

Perhaps the best description of the African reality is tribalism, which is Africa's foremost social evil. Tribal wars have long been part of the continent's chequered history, and a source of social, political, and economic distress since independence. The identifiable cause of coups in Africa lies in tribal struggles for power.
(Okolo 1989, p. 33)

Indigenous Nations have the right of self-determination Return to Chapter Index

(31/05/17)

During the 1990s, with Third World governments assumed to be firmly in control of their national territories, an international emphasis emerged on minorities, on 'the Fourth World' or 'Indigenous Nations' (see Hughes 1997). The œInternational Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Nations, presented to the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations in 1994, provided a clear statement of the focus:

The Charter of the United Nations, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and resolutions and declarations of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the International Indian Treaty Council and other international bodies related to these organs affirm the fundamental importance of the right of self-determination of all peoples, by virtue of which they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

Paradoxically, as emphasis was increasingly placed on the globalization of economies and the emergence of supra-national political, social and economic integration, the rights of minority groups within national boundaries were increasingly emphasized in international debate. Representatives of such groups found receptive audiences in international forums and in First World nations in pressing claims for the recognition of:

... the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights and characteristics of Indigenous Nations, especially the right to lands, territories and resources, which derive from each Nation's culture; aspects of which include spiritual traditions, histories and philosophies, as well as political, economic and social customs and structures.
(œUN 1994)

While continuing to treat the state as separate from and able to direct the activities of 'its people', international organizations and First World leaders 359 increasingly required Third World governments to recognize the rights of minorities within their boundaries. As the Covenant said:

Indigenous Nations have the right of self-determination, in accordance with international law, and by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development without external interference;

... Indigenous Nations may freely choose to participate fully in the political, economic, social and cultural life of a State while maintaining their distinct political, economic, social and cultural characteristics, and not relinquishing the inherent right of sovereignty.
(UN 1994)

By placing these demands in the context of Awolowo's description of colonial Nigeria, it becomes apparent that post-colonial authorities were going to face enormous problems if they accepted such demands and attempted to act on them:

There are various national or ethnical groups in the country [Nigeria]. Ten main groups were recorded during the 1931 census as follows: (1) Hausa, (2) lbo, (3) Yoruba, (4) Fulani, (5) Kanuri, (6) Ibibio, (7) Munshi or Tiv, (8) Edo, (9) Nupe, and (10) Ijaw.... 'there are also a great number of other small tribes too numerous to enumerate separately...'

It is a mistake to designate them 'tribes'. Each of them is a nation by itself with many tribes and clans. There is as much difference between them as there is between Germans, English, Russians and Turks for instance.
(Awolowo 1947, pp. 48-9)

In part, these apparently contradictory emphases signaled the decreasing importance being placed upon nation-states in the world of the late 1990s. In part, however, the emphasis on the rights of minorities also reflected the realities of the ethnic conflict which has been present in Third World nations since their inception, and which was becoming a major concern in the First World.

A 1995 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) report described the problem:

More and more small states are emerging, requiring new forms of extra-national arrangements and development assistance. Conflicts such as those in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chechnya are recent and dramatic manifestations of an emergent nationalism that created new, and exacerbated old, political, economic, religious, and ethnic problems. Violence and war have continued unabated in various parts of the developing world.
(œUN 1996)

Third World nations were being challenged by forces both inside and outside state boundaries 360.

Since September 11th 2001, with the West re-oriented to seeking out and destroying 'terrorists' wherever they might be found (or imagined), those minorities which have not already secured rights (and many who have) find themselves categorized as 'terrorists' by central governments.

A new language has emerged to legitimize harsh reaction to minority demands. Branding a minority movement a 'separatist terrorist organization' seems to mute condemnation of any action against it from most Western governments. Adopting the policies and justificatory language of George W. Bush's United States, central governments have readily asserted, in the words of Henry Hyde, that:

We must be prepared not only to protect ourselves from new assaults, not only to intercept and frustrate them, but to eliminate new threats at their source. This must be a permanent campaign, similar to the ancient one humanity has waged against disease and its never-ending assault upon our defenses
(Hyde 2001)

With Western governments committed to similar reaction to those who oppose them around the world, it has become increasingly difficult for disadvantaged minorities to gain support or even a hearing in international forums. Movements which were supported during the 1990s are now cut adrift, to fend for themselves.

The consequences can be seen in the increasing flows of displaced persons, no longer welcome in Western countries which now see them - whatever their age or gender - as a looming threat to national security.

The World is Awash in Weapon Systems Return to Chapter Index

(25/03/16)

From the outset, most Third World governments have had to contend with the competing interests of powerful ethnic and regional groups, more intent on furthering their own interests than in ensuring workable national government. This, in many countries, has led to long-term civil unrest, insurrection, and civil war.

In the climate of the Cold War, such difficulties were compounded by international powers confounding tribal, regional and clan conflict with ideological confrontation between capitalism and communism. The protagonists were, as we've seen, often armed and funded by competing international forces.

In the post-Cold War period, the flow of arms did not diminish. With huge stockpiles of weapons no longer required by Western and Eastern bloc countries, arms merchants were able to offer sophisticated weaponry at bargain basement prices with little or no check on the credentials or intentions of purchasers.

James Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence, in testimony to the US Senate Select Intelligence Committee on 10 January 1995, claimed that:

... the proliferation of advanced conventional weapons and technology [is] a growing military threat as unprecedented numbers of sophisticated weapons systems are offered for sale on the world market.

Especially troubling is the proliferation of technologies and expertise in areas such as sensors, materials, and propulsion in supporting the development and modernization of weapons systems.

Apart from the capability of some advanced conventional weapons to deliver weapons of mass destruction, such weapons have the potential to significantly alter military balances, and disrupt U.S. military operations and cause significant U.S. casualties.

And Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr., Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, before the same committee:

[W]hile we tend to focus on current and future high technology big-ticket items, it's important to remember that the world is already awash in weapon systems. These range from the relatively simple small arms and mines, to more advanced hand held surface to air missiles, to increasingly advanced anti-ship cruise missiles.

Any country with hard currency can and will get these systems. And while they won't lead to military defeat of U.S. forces, they certainly hold out the prospect of casualties. As we have seen in the past, this can have both a major impact on force planning for peacekeeping operations and a significant domestic political impact on their conduct.
(œArms Sales Monitor February 1995, p. 3)

As Rachel Stohl has described, the 21st century has seen little change in the flow of weaponry to Third World territories:

In the last six years, Washington has stepped up its sales and transfers of high-technology weapons, military training, and other military assistance to governments regardless of their respect for human rights, democratic principles, or nonproliferation. All that matters is that they have pledged their assistance in the global war on terrorism.
(œRachel Stohl (2008))

Thom Shanker, in A New York Times article, September 6th, 2009, entitled Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows, outlined the continued growth in arms sales over the past several years:

In the highly competitive global arms market, nations vie for both profit and political influence through weapons sales, in particular to developing nations, which remain "the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by weapons suppliers," according to the study.

Weapons sales to developing nations reached $42.2 billion in 2008, only a nominal increase from the $41.1 billion in 2007.
(œShanker 2009) 361

As the following graph shows, arms transfers to the 'developing' world by the United States have sped up since the 2008 global financial crisis. The United States, in 2011, was responsible for 79% of all arms transfer agreements with Third world countries.362.

œ

Richard Grimmett and Paul Kerr (2012), presented a detailed report of arms agreements and transfers to the Third World between 2004 and 2011 to the US Congress. As they explained:

In worldwide arms transfer agreements in 2011-to both developed and developing nations-the United States dominated, ranking first with $66.3 billion in such agreements or 77.7% of all such agreements. This is the highest single year agreements total in the history of the U.S. arms export program. Russia ranked second in worldwide arms transfer agreements in 2011with $4.8 billion in such global agreements or 5.6%. The value of all arms transfer agreements worldwide in 2011 was $85.3 billion, a substantial increase over the 2010 total of $44.5 billion, and the highest worldwide arms agreements total since 2004.
(œConventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2004-2011, (US Congressional Research Service, August 24, 2012, R42678))

Updated reports on Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations and related studies can be accessed from the œUS Congressional Research Service Reports on Conventional Weapons Systems website.

For further insights into these issues see: A 'Perfect' Solution: Hypersonic Warfare (Is this the way our world ends?)

Parliamentary democracy, one-party states, military coups Return to Chapter Index

Destructive as the weapons build-up and regional and ethnic challenges have been within Third World countries, there were other equally disruptive forces involved in challenging the viability of new nation-states. Where post-colonial governments were established through the electoral processes of democracy, those who entered parliament were supposed to conform to Western European parliamentary and governmental practices.

Parliamentary democracy, particularly of the Westminster form, depends on those elected seeing themselves as representatives, not of people in particular residential regions within the nation, but of particular 'parties' which represent the interests of particular social 'classes' and pressure groups, each with its distinctive ideology. Ethnic and clan differences are assumed to have been overridden by economically-based class distinctions which cut across group boundaries.

People are presumed to be committed to particular ideological positions espoused by the parties for which they vote.

Parliamentary democracy of Western European varieties philosophically presupposes a commitment by the majority of the population to the nation, with individuals vicariously sharing in the achievements of the nation as though they were their own achievements363. Thomas Hobbes, in the 17th century, provided the philosophical underpinnings for this form of nationalism. The commitment of individuals to the nation creates:

... a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner as if every man should say to every man: I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition; that thou give up thy right to him and authorise all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a COMMONWEALTH.
(Hobbes 1909 [1651], ch. 17)

The government becomes the individual writ large, and individuals effectively enter into contract with the government to support it as long as all other individuals in the nation do so, too. However, as we have seen, this form of commitment presupposes an existing unity or nationalism amongst the populace. Government is aimed at balancing the competing interests of classes and pressure groups, fulfillling their aspirations at the national level.

Neither the 'classes'364 nor widely endorsed 'parties'365 and ideologies existed in most newly independent countries.

The Nigerian Head of State, œGeneral Murtala Mohammed, speaking to the Nigerian Constitution Drafting Committee in 1976, spelt out the problem:

Since the inception of this Administration, and particularly since the announcement of your appointment as members of the Constitution Drafting Committee, there has been a lively debate in the press urging the introduction of one form of political ideology or another. Past events have, however, shown that we cannot build a future for this country on a rigid political ideology. Such an approach would be unrealistic.

The evolution of a doctrinal concept is usually predicated upon the general acceptance by the people of a national political philosophy and, consequently, until all our people, or a large majority of them, have acknowledged a common ideological motivation, it would be fruitless to proclaim any particular philosophy or ideology in our constitution.
(Murtala Mohammed 1976, pp. 12-15)

As Murtala Mohammed argued, variant political ideologies within a nation detail alternative biases in organization and activity, based on a common underlying understanding of the world and commitment to national government. Where that common understanding and commitment do not exist, it is difficult, if not impossible, to gain widespread, long-term support for the particular ideology of a political party. Rather, people define themselves in terms of ethnic and regional identity.366

In Third World nations, those elected to office have sometimes publicly endorsed particular political ideologies 367 which have spelt out alternative forms of centralized government of the nation. However, most of them already knew, or soon found, that their constituents were not committed to the articulated ideology and many of them simply did not understand its rationale.

Instead, people presume members of parliament to be committed to the communities which they represent. The communities do not see central government as an important institution through which the national economy might be safeguarded and nurtured or through which the nation might achieve 'stability' or 'economic well-being' or 'greatness'. Rather, they see it as the source of jobs, wealth and goods which could flow to themselves if their representative is astute.

Okwudiba Nnoli described this problem in post-colonial Nigeria:

Nigerianisation involved efforts by the ethnically based ruling parties in the regions to secure the complete domination of the regional public service positions by the relevant regional functionaries, or, in their absence, to prevent rival ethnic groups from filling the relevant posts. This same strategy was evident in the inter ethnic struggle for positions in the federal public service.
(Nnoli 1980, p. 196)

Paula Brown spelt out a similar scene in her study of leadership in the New Guinea Highlands:

... achievement of a high elective position has the greatest prestige and rewards ... The competition and ambitions of Simbu are demonstrated in the large number of nominees, the lavish expenditure of candidates on their campaigns, the significance of success and expectations of rewards by their followers.

Support of a candidate is an important rural social activity. Provincial and national political office are the counters in Simbu intergroup and interpersonal competition of the 1980s.
(Brown 1987, p. 102)

This direct relationship between the politician and his or her constituency is, of course, closer to the Athenian ideal of democracy than is the party system of Western democracy. But, in the absence of a sense of unity amongst all those whose representatives formed government, it resulted in political and governmental chaos.

When parliamentarians are intent on ensuring that as much of the national wealth as possible is siphoned off to themselves and to their regions, government becomes a process of dividing up the spoils of office, not of focused 'national development'. As Brown said:

With the continued concentration of financial resources in government, politics is the way to wealth ...

Power and prestige in the province focus upon the town; a multi ethnic elite runs the affairs of the province and has connections with the national government, business, and sports activities. The rural communities are its dependents and the source of votes, customers, clients, and parishioners.

... these leaders are not detached from their rural relatives for two reasons.

First, the selected officials represent rural constituencies where they must be nominated, campaign, receive votes, and serve rural supporters. In their distribution of benefits they reward their supporters and constituents with jobs and services.

Second, the upper and urban segment is not independent of a rural base. Although they may live and work outside the rural area they contribute to rural affairs of their kinsmen, clan, and constituents and participate in some rural activities.
(Brown 1987, p. 103)

Nnoli described the situation as it developed in Nigeria:

Most Nigerians have come to believe that unless their 'own men' are in government they are unable to secure those socio-economic amenities that are disbursed by the government. Hence, governmental decisions about the siting of industries, the building of roads, award of scholarships, and appointments to positions in the public services, are closely examined in terms of their benefits to the various ethnic groups in the country.

In fact, there has emerged a crop of 'ethnic watchers' who devote much of their time and energy to assessing the differential benefits of the various groups from any government project.
(Nnoli 1978, p. 176)

During the 1980s, while living on the island of Tabiteuea in the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific during national elections, I canvassed the views of people as to the right kind of parliamentarian for their community. Every person with whom I spoke said that it was the responsibility of the elected person to gain as much for their community as possible from the central government.

People also focused on the cash income and other benefi