ASB Blogs
Kaalhauge Blog » Archive for March, 2008

In this analysis of the origin of the Industrial revolution I have emphasize the paramount role of two cultures as the seed-bed for Europe’s general developmental direction. It is the Greek and Germanic cultures. What characterized Greek and Germanic societies was that they opened the door for a world, where free institutions and the freedom of the mind could prevail. The Greek established the first democratic societies; especially Athens was the role-model. Their societies was by no means perfect by modern standards yet the Greek was the first to raise the idea of a free society in a practical and compelling manner; it was more than an utopian notion, the Greek society was an embodiment of the idea. In this way, the hope for a path-breaking higher civilization was first born with the Greeks. The Greek established a new vision of civic life, which was unknown outside their sphere; indeed, the sphere outside the Greek territory was one of despotism and absolutism in various forms. The concept the Greek introduced to the world was not only the question of freedom but also the idea of natural explanations of natural phenomena summed up in the overall concept of “Reason.” These ideas were inherently linked to their special way of arranging their civic institutions and embodied in their idea of what was essential for a human being. Greek society was later subjugated by other autocratic powers but their significance lied in the way in which they established the principles of rational critical thinking and the idea of a free society.

The Roman society originally looked as if it had the potentials of copying the idea of a free society; their early republic had at least elements of such a path. But for various idiosyncratic reasons linked to the balance of forces in the Roman society, its institutional setting never matched the Greek ideal; in Rome power was always keep within the hand of a comparatively narrow oligarchy, more or less represented by the senate-elite. For a while, Rome was a strange hybrid of oligarchic and “democratic” components. Although the Plebeian Assembly in principle was the only body capable of passing binding lays, it was Senate, which controlled the finances; it meant that the legislation in the final end could be controlled from the Senate. For this and other reasons, the “democratic” components in Roman society never added up and consequently, the collective community of citizens that characterized the Greek society never really emerged in Rome, where money, possessions and old entitlement tend to carry the day. In Greece, “the people” often had the upper hand; that hardly ever happened in Rome. As the Empire grew the autocratic tendencies in the Roman Empire became only strengthened until they were absolute as a power-base. However, even to the last the Roman Empire had a complex double nature; it never became despotic in the Eastern sense but nonetheless its political power-structure became increase despotic in its actual make-up. If Rome hadn’t fallen; European history would undoubtedly have become another version of Eastern despotic societies: This was exactly the fate of the Byzantine Empire.

Hence, if Rome had continue, Europe would have joint the tale of absolutist and despotic Empires, which on to that point had been the all-prevailing component of the world’s socio-political type. Nothing in the past was as standardized as the despots who came and went; some despots’ societies would expand and other would weaken but in the end of the day it was a political spectacle with no deeper socio-technological substance. With the exception of the Greek, no other place in the world had experience anything else than authoritarianism and despotism in one form or another. What is significance for our discussion of world development is that no absolutist and despotic society has ever showed decisive socio-technological and cognitive progress of the kind leading to science and to the breakthrough of an industrial revolution. Generally, despotism in whatever name and form has been nothing but a dead-end in history. What were typical for the world’s autocratic empires and kingdoms before the industrial revolution were their incapacities to progress beyond a certain point. Generally, they might occasionally invent new types of technologies within transport, architecture, medicine or warfare but it never had any decisive impact on their general mode of production from a developmental point of view (as far as their own societies were concerned); the despotic societies was archaic agriculture societies and remained agricultural societies. Moreover, most people who were farmers would live more or less as their ancestors, toiling like beasts; the target for deceases, hunger and natural disasters, which would come and go like waves. Most of these farmer systems could hardly progress due to Malthusian factors and other mechanisms. The story of glory, magnificent temples and aristocratic comfort most often had little or nothing to do with 90 percent of the population. To get the story right, many of these absolutist societies contributed richly to the knowledge, art and techniques of Mankind but they themselves were never able to establish the overall dynamic process within the core of their own societies, which was necessary to reach the point of a significant breakthrough in the basic mode of production. In the best of cases, these despotic societies contributed with bricks to a house they never built. It would be the Greek, who provided the master-plan for “the house” and the Middle Age Europe, who eventual build it.

Generally, in the era of the United Nation, we would like to think that development lies immanent in any society; indeed, even the Amish appeared to change inch by inch. It might even be plausible that all societies in principle embodies the seed of development but what is remarkable in world history until 1750 was not the capacity of the world to develop but rather it capacity to “stand-still” as far as the general mode of production paradigm is concerned. With the exception of Europe what was remarkable in all the world’s societies, who generally was despotic, was the strength of those part of their societal institutions that prohibited, restrained or drastically slowed down any tendencies in these societies in regard to decisive socio-technological, cognitive and industrial developments. As one observer lately phrased it, the industrial revolution was at least 10.000 years delayed, while I would rather stress that it most likely was a miracle that it occurred at all. Indeed, it is not implausible that the modern world never would have emerged, if the battle of Marathon would have been different or if Leonidas had not taken a stand at Thermopylae.

The Battle of Thermopylae, Part 1.

The Battle of Thermopylae, Part 2.

The Battle of Thermopylae, Part 3.

One of the reasons why I mentioned the despotic character of these countries is exactly to highlight the importance of the absolutist freezing of the political structure in some form or another, which is crucial in understanding the institutional obstacle for development. However, those forces that restrained development can be of all kinds of which religious traditionalism is a classical one. In India, of course, the caste-element brings in a very unique contributor to this pattern of restrain, while at the same time religious orthodoxy is a part of the restraining institutions, which has keep India in an iron grip until this very day. China in this regard has a special role, since religion has never played the kind of influence which has characterized Islam and India, so the mechanisms of restrain in the Chinese civilization have been of a different kind.

One of the things we need to understand is the meaning of golden periods in some of these absolutist or despotic societies. What do these golden periods actually mean? One of these golden periods is “Islam’s golden age,” which according to legend is associated with the Abbasid Caliphate, dating from the 8^th century and some period ahead. Many Islamic scholars have emphasized the great achievements of this period, but if this is the case, it only makes it more compelling to explain why this period came to an end and the whole Islamic system started a long period of socio-technological and economic decline? Because what was in reality the effect of this golden period? What difference did it make? In this way, from time to time, some of these despotic Empires had “golden periods” but these “golden periods” were often the old structure in full speed rather than real preludes for higher development. Thus, economic growth in and by itself is not a freeway to a higher type of civilizational development. Growth and development are two separate analytical entities. Indeed, “capitalism” in some of its early archaic regime-forms is only at best a necessary but not a sufficient factor on the road to higher development. One can argue whether Rome had capitalism and if we assume that Rome had capitalism; this in and by itself did certainly not mean that Rome already was half the way toward an industrial revolution. As a general rule, it is important to be careful and restrained, when we analyze the function of commercialism and capitalism in a historical process; they might or might not be elements in a process toward an industrial revolution.

Because, this was the trademark of despotism; its Empires might be growing, trade might be booming, and religious systems might flourishing but in the end of the day, it would often lead nowhere, since it had no major impact on socio-technological progress and growth would become self-exhausted after a while. In the pre-industrial Eastern world, growth was never self-transformatory, the forces of productivity would be carried primarily on “weak” sources of energy and it placed strict limits to productivity and to the organizational matrix of society. All ancient and pre-industrial empires of the Eastern type were all agricultural systems relying on muscle-power, and on comparatively primitive types of technology. The real constrain on development, however, was not the lack of energy but the lack of an adequate social order able to open the gateway of a rational encounter with the socio-technological conditions for the organization of society. Not surprisingly, these absolutist systems left little option for a decentralized, spontaneous order. Traditionalistic inertia was the prime state of affairs. Cultural and political constrains paralyzed or distorted any decisive attempt in establishing the kind of cognitive and civic environment necessary for the special blend of entrepreneurship and science, which at least historically should prove essential for breaking the ice.

There was no moment in European history short of the miracle of the Greek, which is more crucial than the fall of Rome. As I have argued in some of the previous instalments without the fall of the Roman Empire, it is highly unlikely the socio-economic development in Europe would have lead to the kind of institutional progress necessary for an industrial revolution. In this way, the impact of the barbarian Germanic tribes who determined the political-cultural landscape in Europe after the fall of Rome was absolute crucial. By highlighting the Germanic tribes, I don’t try to ignore the many other cultural contributions shaping the European experiments but it was undoubtedly the Germanic tribes who had the options of shaping the main cultural-political agenda as it emerged as a new reality in the early Middle Ages. As the new Germanic kingdoms rooted themselves in various corners of the European territory, they introduced a completely different way of shaping the institutions of civic society compared with that of the Roman Empire and what was especially significant was their attitude to the general build-up of adequate cognitive learning-process of society. These new cognitive structure was facilitated by the societal community of the Germanic tribes and was not a “gift of Christianity,” since the presence of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire did not produce the same result. The long-term significance of the Germanic culture codes was their ability to promote a fruitful historical development of vibrant entrepreneurship and scientific agendas within the general societal build-up. The new cognitive orientation in the German kingdom was itself a part of the different way in which the new Germanic kingdoms developed the institution of citizenship, a development that grew out of the tribes’ traditional heritage in which democratic and egalitarian factors place a sufficiently critical role. Indeed, the inadequacy of the Romans cognitive habits and the flaws of Rome’s institutional make-up were in the final analysis two sides of the same coin. In the new Germanic setting power was distributed in such a way, so the total equilibrium of forces made it difficult for any hegemonic power to prevail for long. It was the opposite of the Roman situation, where hegemonic tendencies existed in a constant rhapsody with itself. It is claimed that Rome was ruled by law but at least after Augustus powerful men was always stronger than the law (although it is true that Rome was a hybrid of both). Early Germanic Europe remained so fragmented and decentralized that many scholars have spoken about “the failure of state-building” (in many of these areas) but in reality it was not really a question of a the failure of state-building but about a radical different approach to the build-up of the ground-units of the society as a institutional category.   

In this way, the destruction of Rome was a destruction of a dead-end for European history. It is another way of emphasizing that the Middle Ages was not some kind of “extension” of the Roman Empire into the future or a “transformation” in that sense; in contrast the emerging of the Middle Ages constituted a radical break with the past. Naturally, in any radical transformation from one cultural-political system to the next, there always exists a transfer from the past into the future. For example in the case of Hitler’s Germany, the new Reich was build on many elements characterizing the Weimar-republic but few would claim what Hitler’s Reich just was the Weimar-republic in “transformed form:” few would doubt the radical break with the past despite the fact that many elements of the past was transferred into the future in the case of Hitler’s Germany. The same is true about the Roman elements being transferred into the new Germanic order of the Middle Ages; it is senseless to claim that the Middle Ages just was the Roman Empire in a “new version.” The factor of a radical break is fundamental for any deeper understanding of the new institutions that emerged.  

Naturally, the question of the degree to which the Germanic tribes used the Greek-Roman heritage in building more sophisticated versions of their own cultural-political system is naturally an important issue for academic debate but generally there existed strong limits to the success by which the Romans was able to “Romanizing” the indigenous people under their submission and control. In the end of the day the Germans remanded the Germans, the Celt the Celt, the Arabs the Arabs and the Jews the Jews. There were exceptions to this rule; Syria appearedly according to Maurice Sartre had been greatly Hellenized in ways, which for example never happened in Great Britain despite claims to the contrary. However, the Hellenization of Syria was a fact even before the Romans arrived, so this development was not simply the fruit of the Empire’s civilizational might. Much has been written about how much various indigenous tribes became “Romanized” but in reality this question varied in the extreme and in the end of the day, it didn’t seem to touch upon the core of the ethnic phenomenon (in at least significantly many cases). Indeed, if anything in the world has long-term systemic survivability; then it is the ethnic factor.  

The most important component the Germanic tribes adopted from Rome was in the final analysis literacy (which was not any particular Roman invention per se) and it was Christianity, which functioned as the prime agent in this task; indeed, the prestige of the Church was strongly connected with its role as an agency for the new technology. The key to the realities of the new Germanic kingdoms lied in its radically different institutional conditions for citizenship, which was introduced into the societal build-up and this issue was strongly correlated to new attitudes toward learning and cognitive orientation. Again, it is important to emphasize the radical different way in which the Middle Ages addressed the issue of knowledge in ways that had never existed in Rome. It didn’t mean that the Romans, as far as the upper classes went didn’t care for education; indeed, education was and became increasingly a popular target for the upper-class Romans, for whom education was associated with status and prestige. A famous picture form Pompeii portrays a young woman and a young man with various writing tools in their hands; it was indicative for the great prestige that literacy and education had among the upper-class and upper-middle classes of society. The difference between Romans and Germanic approach was not simply a question about the interest in education as such but rather the context, which each culture endowed in the institution. The crucial difference lied in the level of discourse. Although there were philosophers in the Roman Empire (in most cases people of Greek decent), the Romans either didn’t care much about philosophy or to the extent they did, their command of the topic was generally mediocre. (Stoicism is the shining exception from the rule). Beyond their significant intellectual capacities in statesmanship, the Romans, generally, had a compassion for the exotic, simplistic and occult and their idea of knowledge and cognition was geared within that frame of mind. Intellectually, on the spiritual level, the Roman had never progress far beyond the point, which Plato would have characterized as a Kindergarten state-of-mind. Religiously, they never really went beyond a low-key, ritualized hodgepodge of “household” Gods and icons. Create a statue and call something a “God,” and the average Roman would be intellectually content and happy. This pattern of cognitive mapping corresponded to the strange way in which the Romans both was cynically street-smart on the one hand and strangely intellectually naïve on the other. It was not accidental that rhetoric was the most estimated discipline among the arts of the Roman academic community; in Rome it was more important to persuade than to understand. The wise man in Rome was a lawyer, Cicero was the prototypical case. Knowledge in Rome translated most of all into sophisticated power-interpretations; a capable Roman “intellectual” dealt with war, politics and taxation not with something as lofty as philosophy. Generally, social prestige in Roman society was a persistently inflationary and the claim about a trend toward decadence as argued by Gibbon lied implicit in this pattern. Because the social institutions were comparatively weak, there was no deeper obstacle restraining the political scene. As a phenomenon, it was correlated to the cybernetic domination of the political system in the interpenetrative mechanisms of the Roman social system; it resulted in a race for power, which knew of no limits or moderation. In the end of the day, education in Rome had much to do with the Romans’ obsession with power and the cognitive gestalt was seen as just another way of power-control and a path to personal gain. The idea of the Greek that knowledge should be loved for its own sake was a very strange notion for any Roman. The Roman nation had been born in a harsh (almost desperate) struggle for survival and this quest for power-control became constitutive for their world-view as such.  

It is true that as the Empire began to decline and as various alarm-signals began to flash; the Roman population  (which now have become increasing “multicultural”) showed signs of increasing intellectual (or spiritual) interests, which clearly expressed a psychological quest of understanding the meaning of the alarming development characterizing the fate of the Empire. Yet, the Romans were ill prepared for this intellectual challenge. Again, it was the Romans tendency toward the exotic and occult that prevailed. In the moment of spiritual crisis, many Romans were easy prey for the emerging supermarket of salvationist and exoteric cults arriving as specialities from the Middle Eastern, of which Christianity just was one of many.