Why did Humans create States?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

For Christmas I received the book Against the Grain by James C. Scott. It’s initially question is interesting: recent evidence suggests that humans were healthier, more equitable, and had more leasure time living as hunter/gatherer bands than they did in sedantary communities that were the precursors to the earliest States.  Epidemic was rife in early States and famine more likely when people were subject to The vagaries of climate in one locale.  States had harsh laws and rulers that demanded people give of their production to keep the State functionality and the rulers living as they wanted to live.  That being the case why did States form in the first place?

I have no clue.  Anyone want to hazard a discussion of this question?

[Datepalm]

Hunter-gathering is fucking boring and farms got you a leisure class and time to figure out alphabets, leading in short order to books about melancholy dragons.

Also, shifts in climate or exhaustion of livestock meant a need for more efficient food production.

Seriously, I'm distrustful of the romanticization of pre-agriculture. It's popular (Guns, Germs and Steel, now Yuval Noah Harari, etc, etc) but too clearly a sentiment of our time and not particularly convincing.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

19 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

Hunter-gathering is fucking boring and farms got you a leisure class and time to figure out alphabets, leading in short order to books about melancholy dragons.

Also, shifts in climate or exhaustion of livestock meant a need for more efficient food production.

Seriously, I'm distrustful of the romanticization of pre-agriculture. It's popular (Guns, Germs and Steel, now Yuval Noah Harari, etc, etc) but too clearly a sentiment of our time and not particularly convincing.

But States destroy equitable distribution.  Every State will always have a class with more control than others (your leisure class) that exists based upon the labor of others.  Why would people consent to being those who aren’t the “leisure class”?

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

But States destroy equitable distribution.  Every State will always have a class with more control that others (your leisure class) that exists based upon the labor of others.  Why would people consent to being those who aren’t the “leisure class”?

I'm not sure many of them "consented". Probably most people were forced to labor for others. I'd imagine early rulers were a lot like gang leaders. If they were successful and could dole out goodies, some people followed them. And then they conquered and terrorized others into submission.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

Also, the transition from bands of hunter-gatherers to actual states was very long. Like, thousands of years long. The people involved would not have noticed it. 

Even the shift from hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers seems to have been very slow, driven by gradual population increases and advances in agricultural technology. 

[DMC]

To add to the OP, there was an interesting interview with Scott posted last month here.

28 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That being the case why did States form in the first place?

Scott addresses this in the above link:

Quote

In the long run, states were always going to be militarily and technologically superior to hunter-gatherer societies, and states were able to increase their populations in ways hunter-gatherer societies could not manage. So it seems inevitable that we would eventually end up with something like the modern state system we have today.

 

22 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

But States destroy equitable distribution.  Every State will always have a class with more control that others (your leisure class) that exists based upon the labor of others.  Why would people consent to being those who aren’t the “leisure class”?

Philosophically, the answer to this seems to depend where you fall on the conceptual "state of nature" discussed in-depth by the dead white guys (e.g. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc).  The social compact is inherently rooted in the state protecting you and your "property." 

If you think human nature is "good" enough that both would be secure in a state of nature (and/or if you do not place much value or concern on your property), then yes, it wouldn't make much sense for people to consent to the inequitable distribution of ancient, and even modern, states.  Personally, I think working to improve society from within is more worthwhile than refusing to sign the social compact - if hypothetically we were giving such a choice - because, as Scott says above, the state is inevitable anyway.

[TrueMetis]

1 hour ago, Datepalm said:

Hunter-gathering is fucking boring and farms got you a leisure class and time to figure out alphabets, leading in short order to books about melancholy dragons.

Also, shifts in climate or exhaustion of livestock meant a need for more efficient food production.

Seriously, I'm distrustful of the romanticization of pre-agriculture. It's popular (Guns, Germs and Steel, now Yuval Noah Harari, etc, etc) but too clearly a sentiment of our time and not particularly convincing.

Been meaning to pick this one up, because I've had people give me arguments based on it that are so clearly wrong I want to know if the book makes the arguments as badly as the people who read the book.

As for why we made the very long shift? As I recall the difference between starving to death and not in a hunter-gatherer society is pretty bloody narrow. Even animals that are way better suited to killing things than us aren't very successful in their hunts. Moreover every time you go out to hunt you risk being killed by something. Either by what you're trying to hunt or something that would also like to eat the thing you're hunting. A field of wheat isn't going to maul you to death and despite the issues is a much more reliable source of food. (and beer, don't forget the beer)

The reason hunter societies are more equitable should also be looked at. And that's largely because their isn't a surplus and the loss of a single hunter or gatherer can mean death for the tribe in the smaller tribes and is still a significant loss in the larger ones.

[The guy from the Vale]

I think the answer lies in geography, efficiency, and the projection of power. Namely, when the last ice age ended, certain formerly fertile plains in northern Africa, the Middle East, India and East Asia experienced rapid desertification. The only areas where hunting or foraging was still an option were the river valleys. But too many former hunter-gatherers were moving to those places; extensive foraging didn't leave enough food for everybody. So the incentives for more efficient ways of getting food were in place.

Once that had happened, the emergence of those relatively densely populated areas meant that for the first time in prehistory, control of arable land mattered. Towns fortified, the first soldiers emerged. And with them came the option of conquest. Also, agriculture meant land ownership was a thing now, and that process kept driving still nomadic people further and further away from the fertile river valleys.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

13 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Been meaning to pick this one up, because I've had people give me arguments based on it that are so clearly wrong I want to know if the book makes the arguments as badly as the people who read the book.

As for why we made the very long shift? As I recall the difference between starving to death and not in a hunter-gatherer society is pretty bloody narrow. Even animals that are way better suited to killing things than us aren't very successful in their hunts. Moreover every time you go out to hunt you risk being killed by something. Either by what you're trying to hunt or something that would also like to eat the thing you're hunting. A field of wheat isn't going to maul you to death and despite the issues is a much more reliable source of food. (and beer, don't forget the beer)

The reason hunter societies are more equitable should also be looked at. And that's largely because their isn't a surplus and the loss of a single hunter or gatherer can mean death for the tribe in the smaller tribes and is still a significant loss in the larger ones.

I started the book yesterday and I have spent the day cooking for and playig with my kids.  I simply think this is an interesting conundrum.

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

I'm not sure many of them "consented". Probably most people were forced to labor for others. I'd imagine early rulers were a lot like gang leaders. If they were successful and could dole out goodies, some people followed them. And then they conquered and terrorized others into submission.

I think that is true but that being the case why did it take hundreds of thousands of years for people to pool their resources in States to force others to serve them?  

Doesn’t that imply that the  development of agriculture was a negative for humanity in the moral sense as it facilitated despotism?

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I think that is true but that being the case why did it take hundreds of thousands of years for people to pool their resources in States to force others to serve them?  

Doesn’t that imply that the  development of agriculture was a negative for humanity in the moral sense as it facilitated despotism?

I'm not sure. Maybe agriculture had something to do with it. Also, when agriculture became a thing, is possible that metal working and weapons technology improved making warfare more profitable?

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

 Also, agriculture meant land ownership was a thing now,

Yes, it would seem agriculture would have made control of territory more valuable.

Plus it would seem if you settled down to farm, you might be more vunerable to attack, so some sort of defense would probably have to be organized.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Doesn’t that imply that the  development of agriculture was a negative for humanity in the moral sense as it facilitated despotism?

I think that's a rather impossible question to answer.  Agriculture --> increased population --> competition for resources.  Seems to me much of the ancient hunter-gathering societies endured due to an overabundance - that's the point right? - they had an overabundance of resources for subsistence (e.g. Mesopotamia).  If that's not the case, who's to say such societies would not have (d)evolved into despotism, tyranny, gross inequality, etc.?

[Seli]

One point I have seen recently is that the information that claims hunter-gatherers have more leisure time is probably deeply flawed. It ignored the 'housework' of food processing.

To be specific it was this article  http://www.rachellaudan.com/2016/01/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-terrible-mistake.html which is worth reading

Quote

The agriculture-as disaster theory rests, at least in part, on ignoring the work involved in processing and cooking food.  If you take cooking and processing into account, agriculture was not a disaster.

...

But read on

“To accept the proposition that housework is work . . . does not mean that housework should necessarily be brought into the sphere of capitalist wage labor. . . . I have considered housework [defined as including food processing, tending the fire, collecting firewood] as a separate category in order to make these data comparable with data on industrial and other societies.”

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

DMC,

Thank you so much for linking that interview.

[Seli]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

But States destroy equitable distribution.  Every State will always have a class with more control than others (your leisure class) that exists based upon the labor of others.  Why would people consent to being those who aren’t the “leisure class”?

That might be a feature, not a bug. And the innovation, stability, specialization that the leisure class brings might be enough of an edge. Especially keeping in mind that segregation between classes depends on larger states. As far as I know both in eg Viking age Scandinavia and Homeric Greece the rulers were farmers as well. And it takes bigger states to get from that 'primus inter pares' to a controlling class.

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

DMC,

Thank you so much for linking that interview.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Why did Humans create States?

Not having studied the subject in depth, my vantage is from labor and collective effort.

When early clans began to solve challenges collectively (bridges, dams, harvesting, routes) they wished to protect the benefit of those efforts. So just as they realized the benefit of that collective, organized labor, they banded together to mutually protect the advantages these efforts gave them. 

The first state would have needed to be formed to protect and preserve the fruits of collective projects. The labors necessitated the defense from other groups taking the advantages from groups that wanted to protect their position. (From GOT's this would be a bit like the House of Frey and the Twins).

Extrapolated over multiple groups in a geograpic region, the banding of groups would become more organized over time as the groups see the advantages to mutual defense and rewards of collectively building and farming. Many groups band into one strong group for that region, you have a state.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Why did Humans create States?

Not having studied the subject in depth, my vantage is from labor and collective effort.

When early clans began to solve challenges collectively (bridges, dams, harvesting, routes) they wished to protect the benefit of those efforts. So just as they realized the benefit of that collective, organized labor, they banded together to mutually protect the advantages these efforts gave them. 

The first state would have needed to be formed to protect and preserve the fruits of collective projects. The labors necessitated the defense from other groups taking the advantages from groups that wanted to protect their position. (From GOT's this would be a bit like the House of Frey and the Twins).

Extrapolated over multiple groups in a geograpic region, the banding of groups would become more organized over time as the groups see the advantages to mutual defense and rewards of collectively building and farming. Many groups band into one strong group for that region, you have a state.

How do you factor Goblekli Tepe into your analysis?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

57 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How do you factor Goblekli Tepe into your analysis?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe

 

G.T. is in the region that archeologists believe wheat could have first been cultivated. This literally wouldve been one of the earliest areas that people wouldve collectively cultivated and harvested. Hence we are unearthing ancient examples of structures that resemble temples and early artisan work that challenges the previous notions of pre-history's timeline.

 

Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple? | History | Smithsonian

Smithsonian Magazine › history › gobekl...

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Predating Stonehenge by 6000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise ... village just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat ; ...

[Spring Bass]

"The future belongs to the fecund", more or less. Peasant farmers may have led less happier, harder lives than hunter-gatherers, but they had superior numbers and growth rates. That meant they could mobilize more people over time than hunter-gatherers, who tended to either retreat to marginal areas, end up submitting (unhappily) to agricultural production, or turning to pastoralism (and then ironically conquering many of those agrarian civilizations later on). And once a society embraced agriculture, the only way for it to turn back was through mass death and societal collapse (and even then it didn't usually happen).

The state was a way of taming the resultant agrarian authoritarianism, creating more stratification in agrarian societies but also at least providing some rules and regularity to it. It also tended to be a project undertaken by the dominant king or ruler to tame the power of unruly oligarchical aristocrats by building up institutions that contained their power and built up a power base directly with the population itself (and so many states were constantly at war, it also helped mobilize resources and warriors for that). That's essentially what most state formation was in the Middle Ages onward, and you could argue that it's essentially what Augustus and the later emperors in the "Pax Romana" period were doing to tame the brutal oligarchical competition under the Late Republic.