Thoughts On The Creation Of The State

*Author's Note:  This post (placed here for sharing and quick reference purposes) comes from a lot of places:  My childhood conversations with my father and other travelers long since passed, my anthropological pedigree, some educated speculation, because I love revealing esoteric wisdom in the form of "what-if" stories, a lifetime of the road less traveled, and a great majority is freely adapted, and/or stolen verbatim from the works of  Manly P. Hall, Hakim Bey, Plato, and others much wiser than I.  Is this how it all happened?  Is this how it really is?  Who knows?! It's just another story...*

The Rise of the State

A long, long time ago (no one remembers precisely who, where, or when) the science of mathematics was discovered by ancient women and men...  

This allowed them to count, organize, integrate, and classify natural phenomena.  They could quantify time, eliminate generalities, increase accuracy and precision, map and find locations, and formulate solutions to problems on multiple analytical and operational scales.  As the universe and its machinations were slowly revealed, it became understood that certain laws and rules normally applied, and that nothing happened through accident.  Effect followed cause as sure as night followed day.  

They soon began to track the movements of celestial bodies, as Astronomy (and Music) was impossible before Math.  Vigilant observation of the stars eventually produced predictable patterns.  In the time lost to history, this combination of applied mathematics and astronomy heralded the formation of what has been described as Astro-theology (astrotheology) and defined by some as "Religion based upon the supporting evidence of Nature."

Natural cycles like the four seasons were recognized and timed.  The zodiac and ecliptic became known.  The 25,920 year precessional cycle was tracked and contemplated.  The universe was recognized as a wonderfully complex network of apparent clockwork precision that was ruled by....what?  

Since humans possess only the ability to investigate the physical properties of reality, eventually it was determined that the physical universe itself is just...a symbol...created and ruled by processes, which are not directly observable,  So, through rigorous contemplation of forces, which were physically observable, it was decided that there must be unseen powers at work influencing the operation of the observable universe/reality.  Natural observations were therefore symbolic representations of invisible realities.  Consequently, morals and values were originally developed based on the symbolic representation of the results of natural examination.

As knowledge increased, those who possessed it quickly understood that power came along with it.  This power could be used for either good or evil purposes, depending upon the inclination of the powerful.  Historically speaking, the misplaced use of power has caused unknowable harm to humankind.  Power (knowledge) in the wrong (unethical) hands, and the temptations that accompany it are obviously potentially quite dangerous.  Like Pandora's box though, once the genie of knowledge is out of the bottle, it can't be put back in again.  To solve this dilemma, certain dedicated ancient scholars with advanced knowledge resolved to keep it, and any new knowledge they obtained, secret until an individual had proven themselves worthy, through trials, tests, and initiations, to receive it.  

These elect custodians of knowledge, these "philosopher-priests," unselfishly believed that knowledge existed only to serve humankind, not as a tool to control and enslave it.  They disdained material wealth and the temptations of the flesh which accompany it.  It was understood that a system must be created and utilized to disseminate knowledge to proven-worthy recipients in a carefully controlled environment, lest the knowledge be lost upon the death of the original custodians, or used in an unethical manner detrimental to humanity at large.  Today, we call this ancient instructional system "the mystery schools."

Neophytes were put through years of progressively rigorous discipline and ethical testing before knowledge would be imparted to them.  Thus it was ensured that knowledge deemed crucial to the advancement of humankind wouldn't be misused through greed, selfishness, or ambition.  To the philosopher-priests of the mysteries, ignorance was defined as the inability to accurately discern right from wrong.  Woe to any who 'dwell in darkness.'  The newly indoctrinated priesthood would then establish their own academies, in order to perpetuate the proper dissemination of the sacred wisdom.

The birth of the State is also shrouded in a certain mystery. Something went wrong somewhere.  The old myths (based on reciprocity & redistribution) collapsed before the power of a new "story" based on separation and accumulation.  However it occurred, eventually a portion of this knowledge became known by the people at large; entering the domain of the profane.  Ambitious, unethical men, lacking both complete knowledge and the wisdom to wield it, created their own systems of religious thought and groups of adherents.  Backed by armies and wealth, they toppled the old power structure.  The mystery schools and their acolytes were forced to relegate themselves to an underground existence, which arguably persists to this day.

The precise instant is lost, although the true State lurches into archaeological view sometime around the 4th millennium BCE in Sumer & Egypt. In both cases the realms of war and religion seem to have coalesced to produce figurative and literal pyramid structures, seemingly impossible to conceive without tribute and/or slavery. The centrifugality of the shamanic social is gradually supplanted by the centripetality of power and wealth until a crisis point is reached.  This results in the catastrophic emergence of a "priest-king" and a nascent bureaucracy, the infallible signs of the true State.

The Problem of Money $$$

Even the most primitive king can only be defined by the creation of scarcity and the accumulation of wealth.  This 'double process' can only be reproduced in symbolization. Generally this means that the king is somehow "sacred" and personally symbolizes the very motion of energy in or between surplus and scarcity. But this motion must be impeded if the energy-transfer can only take crude material form (actual cows or jars of wheat etc.). The essential exchange of protection-for-wealth that defines the true State must be symbolized in order to transcend what might be called the inherent egalitarianism of the material, its recalcitrance, its natural resistance to accumulation. "Protection" moreover has no overt material base, whereas wealth does.  Hence, the State will be at a disadvantage in the exchange unless it can present its power in symbolic (non-material) form, as nothing for something.

In the remote past we can discern money in the symbolic exchange and social construction of the sacrifice. When the tribe grows beyond the point where it can re-create itself in the sharing of a sacrificial animal, for instance, we might surmise that one's "due share" could be symbolized by some token. Once the "spiritual content" of these tokens is transferred to an economic sphere outside the sacrifice, the existence of the tokens would then facilitate the "creation of scarcity" by symbolizing the accumulation of wealth. When the symbolic counters themselves are then symbolized by writing, we can speak not only of money but of banking: the centralization of debt at the socio-religio-political focus of power, the Temple.  Thus money would precede the State in this scenario. To put it crudely, money exists for 4000 years before it mutates into a form that makes possible the emergence of the true State.

If we look to the future, we can see even more clearly that money exists beyond the State. In a situation where money is "free" to move across borders in defiance of all political economy, as in neoliberal free-market internationalism, the State can find itself abandoned by money, and re-defined as a zone of scarcity rather than wealth. The State remains by definition mired in production, while money attains the transcendence of pure symbolization.

The true sleight-of- hand however, lies in the fiat-money machinations of the central banks. When all thrones in the world were hopelessly in debt to their own self-created central banks, the focus of power shifted. When governments resign their ancient role of protection, money breaks free at last.  Governments can now provide only nothing for nothing.  Their power is shattered.

Money, the State, and Religion are all powers of oppression, but not the same power of oppression. In fact, when deployed against each other, they can act as powers of liberation. Money "buys freedom" for example; the populist State can suppress the banks, thus freeing its citizens from "money-power"; and religion has been known to deploy its "higher morality" against both economic and political injustice.

Moreover, the State does not appear all at once in its "absolute" form. If "primitive" societies possess institutions which successfully prevent the emergence of the State, the eventual emergence of the State cannot erase these institutions all at once. The "early" State must still co-exist with "customs and rights" that enable Society to resist its power.  The anthropology of "Society against the State" can be extended to a sociology of historical State systems, where some potent institutions and mythemes work against the total accumulation of power.

Money is also held in check in "pre-modern" cultures, not just in so-called "primitive" societies (where money simply fails to appear), but also in quite complex State systems. "Classical civilizations" such as Mesopotamia, Greece, Mesoamerica, Egypt and even Rome retained structures of redistribution of wealth to some extent, if only as bread and circuses; no one could have conceived of a "free" market in such circumstance, since its obvious inhumanity would have violated every surviving principle of reciprocity, not to mention religious law.

It was left to our glorious modern era to conceive of the State as absolute power, & money as "free" of all social restraint. The result might be called the Capital State: the power of money wedded to the power of war. The State appears to know that it was already secretly beaten long ago (all thrones hopelessly in debt...) and has capitulated without a whimper to the triumph of Mammon. With a few exceptions the nations are now falling all over themselves in their eagerness to "privatize" everything from health to prisons to air and water to consciousness itself. "Protection", the only real excuse for the State's existence, evaporates in every sphere of government's influence, from tariffs to "human rights". The State seems somehow to believe it can renounce not only its vestigial power over money but even its basic functions, and yet survive as an elected occupying army!  Even the US, which boasts of itself as the last and final "superpower", is little more than a mercenary force at the bidding of international Capital, capable only of serving the interests of oil cartels and banks. National borders must survive so that political hirelings can divert taxes to "corporate welfare"; and so that huge profits can be made on arbitrage and currency exchange; and so that labor can be disciplined by "migratory" capital. Otherwise the State retains no real function; everything else is empty ceremony, and the sheer terrorism of the "war on crime" (the State's post-Spectacular war on its own poor and different).

RM

UPDATE:  In his writings, Hakim Bey calls the State the quintessentialization of hierarchy & separation, which can, and must, replicate itself on every level of experience from the individual psyche to the laws of nations (achieved via symbolism/language via the medium of $$ in my example). Bey also describes a situation, WHICH I BELIEVE this anarchist has just experienced. Becoming institutionalized, like religion, the State has simply failed to "go away" In fact, in a bizarre extension of the thesis of "Society against the State", we can even re-imagine the State as in institutional type of "custom & right" which Society can wield (paradoxically) against an even more "final" shape of power, that of "pure Capitalism". 

I feel that this perfectly describes the general election process I just personally went through. Here I find/found myself defending "the State's existence" as the Protector of vulnerable populations...the existence of the State's Protection as 'rights.' Since the State is a force of oppression, the cognitive dissonance becomes obvious. This is where the argument blossoms among the anarchists; and it is also the argument between the ideological conservatives (moderates) and the civilizational conservatives. In the end, I'm forced to conclude that what this argument really boils down to is teleological vs. deontological...restated...whether or not one believes that life possesses intrinsic value. This qualifies my 'horror' of the Christians...supposed to appreciate it all...it's all "God's Creation," yet they have abandoned altruism in droves...teleological vs. deontological...seems to encapsulate the whole ballgame.