Re: Forwarded from Anthony

[Greg Schofield <gschofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis unfortunately my knowledge of the Inca is pretty sketchy, which is a
great pity as I know some very fine historical and archaeological work has
been done in recent years, I am on slight firmer grounds with the Aztec
(only slightly though). I say this because memory being what it is a may
well get the details wrong.

There seems to me that in understanding the past the primary concern must
be not to thrust current assumptions onto the subject and that requires a
definite theoretical approach, of one kind or another, capable of drawing
us to recognise uncomfortable details for what they are.

Uncomfortable because such details make us think critically about our own
assumptions - that is things easily overlooked but show that history has
taken some unexpected course or unique bend of its own. Now for this I rely
on an elaborate, but nowhere complete, theory of history. It is an
abstraction devoid of just those details which show history's actual course.

In  fact there is an internal dynamic, as an abstraction the most unlikely
thing is that actual history coincide with abstraction - rather the
reverse, the abstraction merely identifies essential movements which in
their actual realisation must differ in every respect from it - otherwise
theory and reality would simply collapse into one another, the theory would
become the real and vice versa.

In short, theory tells us where to look but not what we will find. Theory
is provoked by details that appear out-of-place, in fact, theory draws our
attention to such details and thus poses the question of exploration, of
explaining why things differ from their theoretically expected appearance.
In this way we are forced to grasp things in the totality of their actual
expression and rescue unique human endeavour, particular conditions and
contextual innovation. And all this torturous prose is to claim that the
purpose of historical theory is to reveal the rich diversity of human
social existence.

This is not said because I expect you to differ in the main from what I
have said, but rather the reverse, to define the common ground on which we
need to assess such theories. Likewise we can also agree on the signs for
when the theory is faulted, that is when the abstractions themselves are
treated as real and the details simply forced to fit - all ideological
errors would have that in common, moreover, another sign of dysfunction
would be when history is homogeneous, where the particulars are all blended
together and make the whole of history a single narrative.

It is easy enough when bourgeois scholars find the whole of history is
nothing other than an expression of human nature through time and place,
especially when that "human nature" is nothing other than the bourgeois
class personified. Feudal kings become CEOs, priests the technical staff,
scribes the literati, courtiers the management team and so on and so forth
until the dumb peasant in the field. History as heroes is simply the ego of
the bourgeois, who is anything but heroic, donning the robes of more
dramatic figures, casting themselves in the leading roles.

When I taught for while in schools, I was fond of repeating that the past
is not just the present minus technology and dressed in funny clothes but a
whole other world which has to be seen within its own context and
appreciated for what it was. Hackneyed sentiments, but true none the less.
Again when we confront bourgeois ideology it is all to easy to identify it
and lampoon its absurdities. But what of our own errors, they may well
perform the same but the historical image will be different and naturally
hidden from view, just as for the bourgeois, the facts will appear to fit,
the annoying details overlooked and the picture will become a harmonious whole.

Debating abstractions cannot do the trick, it is a case of the proof of the
pudding being in the eating and in terms of history that eating must always
consist of concrete examples and disturbing details. Such a debate cannot
be rounded off in a flurry or summed up in a phrase, rather it must be
conducted by actually turning over some soil and revealing more or less of
what can be found.

So in this Louis, I would very much prefer to find examples such as you
have given below and where we have some mutual knowledge just dig through a
spot here or there. Now it can never be a contest of knowledge (I say this
in my own self-defense), nor will every example serve, but diving in here
or there, leaving one area and picking another will perhaps do more to
reveal the issues than any other way I can think of.

In the spirit of discussion I would like to add some dimensions to the
examples, no one need feel obliged to continue with such an example, the
counter argument might well be found in some other illustration. Now to our
Aztecs and Feudal lords.


At 07:35  26/05/01 -0400, you wrote:
<SNIP>
>Bloch's books *do* apply to Latin America, but you do not need to look at
>Europe. You need to look at the Aztec and Incan empires which were straight
>out of Bloch's books. These are classic tributary societies in every sense
>of the word, with all the abuses in fact. But even with the abuses, there
>was the same kind of 'noblesse oblige'.

Leaving aside Bloch, because my reading was some time ago and I cannot
usefully say much about him, lets look a bit closer at the connections
between feudalism and American states of Inca and Aztec. First a little on
Feudal Europe:

Labour obligations and the manor system of a presiding lord, in abstract
can fit any number of situations around the world, tribute was surely one
of the relations in use (Danegeld being a classic), however, the labour
service of the serf to the lord was in no way tributory.

When the slaves became free in the USA, many ex-slaves entered a form of
recognisable serfdom in the share-cropping system, only recently dissolved
in the 1960s. Two things were essential for this feudal recapitulation.

First the semi-semi had to be denied effective judicial rights external to
that of the landlord. It was the landlord, if there was some dispute, would
by their intervention resolve the problem - please note here I am using an
example which feels very wrong afro-americans in the South were denied
civil rights, they had to be in order for the serf like system to be
maintained, however, but the landlords are no fools, they want their
enserfed toilers to work the land and work it productively, if some social
conflict interferes with this it would be the landlord who would intercede
in their interests precisely because his semi-serfs did not enjoy civil
protection (this is where Southern paternalism has its natural base,
alongside communal hatred).

Second the enserfed toiler had to remain as much as possible out of the
circulation of money, as a universal exchange commodity, ready cash
threatens to break the necessary dependances. Thus through indebtedness,
the landlord's share of crop and through the medium of the landlord's
buying merchants, the enserfed could live, even accumulate small comforts,
but savings in money had to be reduced to the bare minimum. Hostility to
cash at this level goes hand in hand with making it a fetish of desire.
Real and necessary needs were often met in the form of the landlord's
largess, a gift, a reward given in order to maintain production and some
equilibrium.

Here we have the lord as both protector and generous father, hand in hand
with denial of rights and exploitation. However, this is mere
recapitulation when like prior conditions (slavery) engender similar
responses. It must be pointed out that this condition was not achieved
without bloody struggle, in the immediate post-war period afro-americans
and white farmers and workers did unite together, in some states
formulating free non-segregated education, occupation and collective
farming of plantations and other things that could have taken the South
down quite a different road. In US history it need night-riders and huge
massacres in order to repress this initial progressive impulse and
establish a modernised form of serfdom.

The course taken in Europe was quite different but in common with the
latter USA, slavery created serfdom. The Manor system can be simply
translated into terms still in use today (though the meanings have shifted)
Villa, Village and Villein. Here the serf takes the name of the Roman
Villa, and the place where they live together becomes the "village". The
relationship is not accidental.

In the Roman world, a freed slave not only takes on the cognomen of the
exmaster, but also assumes Roman citizenship. Ie because the slave,
regardless of birth, came from the home of a Roman, they were therefore
Roman. Here is slavery remembered in its domestic form, that is the very
private nature of Roman slavery whereby legally and physically the slave
became a part of a productive unit - the domis from which all production
originally centered.

In the country side the domis remained, later to become the manor, but this
was no small farming but Roman agriculture at its height, which required
more slaves than could be housed in one building, thus the village was
created as part of the enlarged household or Villa.

In slavery rights outside the Villa where of course no existent, any hurt
to a slave was in civil eyes a hurt to the master not the slave, within the
Villa the slave was at the complete disposal of the owner as is well known.

Whatever the cause the transformation to serfdom was not one that relied on
tribute. Rather the land remained that of the Master, but who allowed his
slaves certain rights to use it. They remained slaves to the extent that
they owned their lord their labour, but he conceded to them the right to
also use their labour for their own direct sustenance, hence the village
was a common and so were the fields, while certain resources such as the
mill and wood each villein had rights of access and use. This was no more
than making formal the arrangements which must of been in place all through
the latter history of classic slavery (though there are plenty of instances
of industrialised slavery where every slave was fed from a common pot and
slept in dormitories and whose every hour was occupied in work).

The church played a vital role in this because through its agency these
rights and obligations were made formal (it is the only place where master
and slave enter as equals). On disputes of rights the church judged, on
criminal matters the lord, there was a balance there of sorts.

A tribute relationship which can be labour or in goods, differs in that the
productive unit (whether nation, town, tribe or village) get on as they
have always done and from their stock pay tribute, if labour is required
they pick those that will least effect the smooth running of things, of
goods they have to plan ahead to either make or purchase them by trade. But
this is not the position of a classic serf, whose limited rights is married
to his specific responsibilities - the serf's production for use takes
second place, it is the lords harvest that is first brought in, the lords
wheat first milled and lands first tilled. When labour is changed into
goods we are going already to the next step when moneyed rent replaces
goods as goods replace raw labour (of course this is uneven - many labour
dues remained and had to be purchased via rent).

>For example, when Incan soldiers
>defeated an enemy village and turned them into subjects, the first thing
>they did was award the victims with fancy clothing made in Incan workshops.
>(The Incans had a big fetish about looking sharp.)

If I remember rightly this was a process of adoption, whereby the newly
acquired kingroup became Inca and these clothes an important ritual gift as
a parent to a child. The obligations of kin then applied and the rights as
well.

>The Aztecs had their own
>odd ways. While everybody goes on and on about the sacrifices, it is
>probably more important to note that an Aztec subject could not have his
>land taken away from him under any circumstances.

Tenochtitlán was a city divided into clan quarters, the land was of the
clan while the so called emperor was the tribal chief (that is in matters
of war), the priests the chiefs of matters civil, each drawn to the deities
of the clans and the supreme Sun and moon cult. The land (more often parts
of the lake) was held in common and given via lineages to all the kin,
these rights existed in the person, hence so long as they lived it was theirs.

The clans had cross loyalties re-enforced by warrior societies who took
their totem from animals, which is often the case in matrilineal societies
where rights to land come down through the female and husbands belong to
different groups and are adopted in, but fight with their clan brothers,
not their wives menfolk.

The usual practice, I do not know the details of the Aztec, is that the
products of labour must circulate and be shared with kin, while large
amounts are dedicated to the clan deity which in some respects becomes the
common store as well as that consumed by priests and others. Likewise
portions owed to the central deity become that of the tribe as a whole and
their leader to use. Other than that labour is given to common needs, in
construction, irrigation, decoration and in many other ways. But all here
is regulated by kinship and all sits not on a persons status but who they
are in regard to everyone else.

Of course some specialised roles stand out, caste like, bestowed to fulfil
one task or another from mother to daughter and their husbands in
matrilineal societies and through fathers and sons and their wives.

Tribute in that it exists by power exerted or threatened was never used
internally amongst the Aztec, but externally to those groups subdued or
frightened into submission (we have some Aztec books which detail out what
should be delivered as tribute by each place and whether they willingly
submitted or did so after an act of war - represented by a burning temple).

It should be remembered that those who first met the Spanish on the shores
of Mexico were only to glad to ally with them in order to repudiate Aztec
overlordship, while Aztec warriors came forward in battle and were
slaughtered in their thousands without suing for peace or asking quarter.

My point is that there just seems no point of resemblance in the way I have
describe the two conditions.

>Needless to say, the society the Spanish created had zero in common with
>this. Superficially, the Indians were their serfs, but this was not a
>tributary society.

Initially I would have thought the conquered native americans were their
slaves.Perhaps once things settled down more serf-like conditions prevailed
(especially after the interventions of the catholic church - another
recapitulation of a former role).

>It was the beginning stages of capitalism, with Indians
>being worked to death in silver mines.

Following Lang at a certain stage it seems just to have become capitalism.

>In contrast, Incan silver mining was
>a much less intense affair since the goal was to produce use-values rather
>than satisfy an exploding global market demand. (Most Latin American silver
>ended up in China and India.)

Tribal groups often engage in extensive mining, it tends to be off-season
work, though I do remember a dig report of a gold operation of the Maya
that looked like a specialised subgroup (but this depends very much on
interpretation - note: there were no signs of women present which tends to
indicate a seasonal specialisation). Most of the great irrigation schemes
of the Near East were done by tribes, only latter becoming more stratified,
as a result of the higher productivity gained (which makes sense - though
it hurts the bourgeois ego).

However, silver does not have a high use-value and nothing about it could
justify the enormous labour of its extraction, rather it was dug in order
to enhance the necessary labour exchanges and bring extra prestige to the
diggers for the hardship of their labour to procure it - silver amongst the
Inca, at least, was often was reserved for the Gods who symbolised the
people as a whole. The sacrifice of labour in mining the stuff thus becomes
a highly regarded expenditure of necessary labour time, hence it usually
must be off-season work when most others are taking it easy, recouping for
the next yearly round.

I think the reason most Latin American silver ended up in the East is a
result of the way the Spanish disposed of it - by buying luxuries, however
latter trade should not be dismissed either.

Greg Schofield
Perth Australia