After the Crusaders have sacked Constantinople:
"In the burnt-out husk of New Rome, order was presently restored. At first, if nothing else, troops needed water and food, for which labor and some kind of civil government were needed, which meant that the dwellers could no longer be harried like vermin." (p. 115)
I couldn't have put it better myself. If the conquerors are to exploit the labor of the local population, then the members of that population have to be alive, physically capable and able to travel to and from work.
If there was a primitive period when the productivity of labor was so low that the work of one person was able to support only one person, then slavery was not yet possible. Slaves have to produce enough to feed themselves and their owners and overseers. When animals were no longer hunted but herded, then slaves could be kept to tend the herds. Industrial workers have to be not only well-fed and healthy but also literate and numerate.
Thus, productive forces had to develop to a certain stage before society could divide into economic classes and the nature of those classes has changed. The way society is now is not the way it has always been.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It's more accurate to say "...productive forces had to develop to a certain stage before society could work out specialization and a division of labor and then classes emerged." That is, a potter, scribe, metal worker, etc., did not have to farm because they could sell their products and services to the farmers.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes, specialization, then class division, the point being that society has changed and will continue to.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course I agree with you here. As societies became more complex, division of labor and economic and socio/poliical specialization emerged.
Ad astra! Sean
Recent research indicates that slavery always existed, even among hunter-gatherers.
The most common form was the abduction and exploitation of women.
Note that in those societies, the routine maintenance labor and the "gathering" part of hunter-gatherer economics was done by women. This was the steady, day-by-day labor; plus sexual services and reproduction/childcare.
Men fought and hunted, particularly large animals or ones that required group effort. This was heavy, dangerous work but it was "burst" labor and didn't need to be done all the time.
Anthropologists noted that hunter-gatherers had lots of leisure, but they were (until very recently) concentrating on what men did as "real work", more or less ignoring the much more constant toil that women did.
Women gathering and men hunting was the earliest division of labor. Pregnant or breast-feeding women could not easily creep or run after prey.
Were captives enslaved or just adopted into the tribe?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: We see the kind of situation you described in Anderson's story "The Forest."
Paul: As time passed I can see some women who had been captured and made slaves becoming de facto members of the tribe. Esp. if they pleased their master and if he was also a powerful or influential tribesman.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: absorbed in stages, usually, starting with very lowly status and everyone kicking them, literally or metaphorically. Full absorption might take place over a lifetime, or over generations, depending on the culture.
For example, among the Haida of what's now British Columbia, slaves (about 1/3 of the population) were thrown into the sea when they died; common free Haida were buried in family graves; and nobles/chiefs/shamans got individual burials with memorial "totem poles".
(The Haida were a high-level pre-agricultural people, living mainly from fishing and hunting sea mammals; they had very advanced handicrafts. They were also ferociously aggressive -- some called them the "Vikings of the Pacific Northwest").
Several tribes in the Amazon basin customarily killed off their own girl-children, and reproduced by abducting grown women (teenagers, mostly) from neighbors. Women have a very low status in that setting, needless to say.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And we see in your Change books the Haida (or people who adopted that name) again relapsing into piracy and raiding.
Shocking, what those Amazon tribes did to girl children. Not exactly the Noble Savages Jean Jacques Rousseau so absurdly dreamed about!
Ad astra! Sean
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