Chapter 1: Turmoil and Progress

Posted: April 23, 2011 - 05:23:06 pm

Samson in the Treadmill by Carl Bloch, Danish painter, d. 1890.

At one time, hunter/gatherers scoured the land in search of food. Small groups of people banded together in tribes, to pool resources. They lived a nomadic lifestyle in which they followed their food sources. Life was controlled by the seasons, and the activity of the animals that were hunted. It was a subsistence lifestyle, but one that provided lots of downtime for the individuals when game was plentiful. It did no good to take more animals than could be used immediately, because the meat would spoil and rot.

If there wasn’t enough food, people died. Draught, flood, blizzard, fire, or illness could wipe out an entire tribe in a season, or an instant. Starvation was just a week away. People learned to eat anything at hand – even each other in the worst of times. When times were bad, they were really bad.

Before the image of ‘the noble savage’ comes to mind, it’s important to realize that life wasn’t peaceful or tranquil. Small skirmishes were fought between tribes competing for land rich in game. The loss of even one hunter, often required the tribe to retreat from battle, since each hunter lost reduced the chances of a tribe to survive. It was often necessary for a tribe to remain small, but if it grew too small, then the tribe would die.

The tribe was the center of life for people living in hunter/gatherer societies. Individuals who could contribute more to the tribe were respected. They were given the first choice of food, shelter, and mates. Those who couldn’t contribute as much were second-class citizens. The weak and infirm were last to receive anything. Those who harmed the ability of the tribe to survive were banished and usually died shortly thereafter. It was a time of might makes right. Life could be very brutal for the weak.

The founding of Eridu in Sumer marked the beginning of the end of hunting/gathering as the primary lifestyle of the human animal. Agriculture became the driver of the economy. However, farming requires land, and people to work the land. If willing people weren’t available in sufficient quantities, then slaves were brought in to work the land.

The establishment of communities brought civilization. Controlling people required the adoption of laws, and trade required the introduction of money. Consistent with a past in which might made right, laws were made by those with the greatest might and represented their interests. Of greatest interest was property and trade. The majority of laws were founded on property and assuring fair and equitable trade, at least from the perspective of the strongest. Of course, the effectiveness and reach of the laws were limited by the ability of the ones who made them, to enforce them. ‘The law of the land’ took precedence over ‘might makes right.’

It didn’t take long for the mighty to realize that the more land one controlled, the more money one made. Wars were fought to control vast amounts of land. Large armies engaged each other to conquer little slices of neighboring land. The wars were often quite brutal, and lasted tens of years. Kingdoms and then nations emerged from the process of claiming more land.

Once the boundaries of nations were basically established, and it became too expensive to fight a war that shifted a boundary only a few miles, nations seeking greater political power established colonies far distant from the centers of government. A colony gave both land and a labor force to be exploited; but, it required that the nation control the locals. Soldiers were shipped to far off lands to subdue and conquer.

The pace of life in an agrarian society was dictated by the seasons, the weather, and the rising and setting of the sun. There was a time of planting and a time of harvesting. Workload was limited by how fast draft animals could pull a plow. When a person wasn’t in the field his time was his own. Of course, a good percentage of that time was spent taking care of the business of providing the necessities of life, and raising children.

Individuals at the lowest class had a tough life. They were the serfs, the slaves, or the peons of society. They had rights (expectations under the law), but those rights were rather limited.

Rather than being a direct measure of how well a person was able to contribute to the welfare of the nation, class was measured in terms of money. Those who controlled money were very unwilling to part with it. A few were rich, while the majority of people were poor.

As it always happens when social inequity exists, class warfare emerged. Those with little became willing to fight to overthrow those with lots of money. Revolutions, slave revolts, and riots became part of the political landscape. These were violent clashes in which massive numbers of people died.

The invention of the steam engine in 1763 by James Watt marked the beginning of the decline of the Agricultural age. A single steam engine could replace hundreds of horses, and it only needed to be fed when in use. It also allowed the development of machines that could perform the work of many men, at much greater speed than any amount of manpower.

Manufacturing rose to replace agriculture as king of the economy. A machine could produce more goods with less cost. Making a machine could be done locally, rather than in some far off colony.

It became necessary to control the sources of raw material and energy, but that could be accomplished by owning the land. The need to control the locals grew less, since labor was replaced by machines. The colonies were abandoned and puppet governments put in place.

People moved from working in the fields to working in factories. A new structure of power emerged – factory owners were over factory managers who were over factory workers. Greed led to a new kind of ruthlessness by owners over workers. Rather than owning slaves, they created wage slaves. It was a simple strategy of paying just enough to keep people working and not enough to cut deeply into profits.

The rise of manufacturing gave rise to schedules. Machines could work twenty-four hours a day, but they had to be operated by people. The result was that people had to work in shifts, and the rising and setting of the sun was not an adequate measure of time. Initially shifts lasted twelve hours, and people worked seven days a week.

Time began to be a central organizer of daily life. The clock was everywhere. At one time vendors sold from early in the morning until they ran out of goods. They now adopted fixed hours of operation. People started to wake according to the clock, and go to bed by the clock. Meals were served according to the clock. ‘Time is money’, became the mantra of the age.

Work was performed in factories. The insulation of the workplace from the outdoors, separated man from nature. The connection to the seasons and nature ... that had, until this time, set the schedule and pace of life ... began to erode. Seasons were dictated by the calendar, rather than the climate. September 22 or 23 became the first day of fall, rather than when the harvest was brought in from the field.

Life for people revolved around scheduled activities. There was a time to work, a time to eat, a time to sleep, and, if one was fortunate, some time was left over for family. Excessive work schedules did not last long, before workers rebelled. Strikes led by labor unions, were the strategy used in the fight against factory owners, to reclaim some time for the people. Many of these strikes turned deadly, but the violence was different from the slave rebellions in the past. If the owner actually died, then the business died with him. If the worker died, then a new one could be hired.

Where the hunter/gatherers had tribes led by chiefs, and the agrarian age had nations run by landed gentry, the industrial age had companies led by captains of industry. The concept of a monopoly arose when one company could become the sole provider of an essential product, and controlled all those who relied upon the product. A new kind of warfare broke out, one in which hostile takeovers became the chief strategy.

These were basically bloodless wars, but lives and livelihoods were affected, nonetheless. More than one expanding company discovered that their victory was a pyrrhic victory. More than one hostile takeover resulted in the larger company folding up operations.

The introduction of machines into the workplace had another major consequence on society. Machines displaced skilled workers. Four classes emerged: non-workers who couldn’t work, those who did simple labor, those who were managers, and those who owned companies. The lowest class had nothing. Those who did simple labor had bare subsistence wages. Those who managed had wages that were somewhat higher than laborers, but only by a factor of two or three.

The invention of the telegraph in 1835 by Samuel Morse was the beginning of the end of the industrial age. It took until 1851 for Western Union to become established as a communications company. It was a remarkably under-appreciated accomplishment at the time, but it was an accomplishment that achieved a most remarkable purpose – the delivery of information nearly instantaneously. It would take a hundred and fifty years for the information age to supplant the industrial age.

The information age saw the captains of industry being replaced by brokers. Brokers produced nothing. They shifted capital around. Rather than owning factories outright, brokers owned parts of companies through shares of stock. Suddenly the need to have factories near where the owner lived became less of an issue. Control could be established and maintained by the expedient of sending a message that shifted money from one place to another.

The absence of a dedicated owner of a company led to a remarkable change in society. A new class of people was introduced: the executives. The executive ran a company on behalf of the owners, in the cases where ownership of the company was distributed amongst thousands of shareholders. They controlled the company, but without the oversight of a dedicated owner. Shareholders, disaffected with the management of a company, would simply trade their shares in that company for shares in what they perceived was a better company. The lack of emotional investment in ownership of companies changed the dynamics of the economy.

The social structure of society changed with the changing dynamics of the economy. There were now five classes of people: the welfare class (non-workers), the blue-collar class (labor), the white-collar class (managers), the executive class (new class), and the rich (owners).

The welfare class emerged once the rich realized that the extremely poor made lousy consumers. Rather than finding ways for the poor to earn money, the expedient of shifting money from the blue-collar and white-collar classes to the poor was adopted. The distinction between the welfare, blue-collar, and white-collar classes became one of only modest economic differences, but extremely different social attitudes.

The differences in the lifestyles of the various classes far exceeded the minor differences in economic income. The welfare class included the uneducated, the criminal, the unstable, and the elderly. Most owned nothing and lived from government handout to government handout, in houses provided by the government or rented hovels in urban slums. The welfare class never traveled, but had the most free time of all of the classes, while lacking the money to truly appreciate it.

The blue-collar class included the factory worker, the tradesman, and laborer. They earned money tied to hours worked by the clock, and lived the most regimented lives of the five classes. Most owned small houses or rented apartments. The blue-collar class might travel on a vacation, but were basically tied to the neighborhoods in which they were raised.