| Written by Richard K. Moore from rural Nova Scotia Part 1: How we got to be the way we are The myth of human dominion and the birth of the Takers "Man was born MILLIONS of years ago, and he was no more a scourge than hawks or lions or squids. He lived AT PEACE with the word...for MILLIONS of years. This doesn't mean he was a saint. This doesn't mean he walked the earth like a Buddha. It means he lived as harmlessly as a hyena or a shark or a rattlesnake." - Daniel Quinn, The Story of B, p. 255. "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." - Genesis, 1:28. Some ten or twelve thousand years ago, in a place called the Fertile Crescent, a momentous event occurred, an event usually referred to as the Agricultural Revolution. (The revolution occurred independently elsewhere, notably in China, but that does not affect our story.) People had learned to sow, harvest crops, and herd animals long before, but with this revolution came a new kind of agriculture, what Daniel Quinn calls totalitarian agriculture. The revolution was not about new knowledge or new tools - rather it was about a change in cultural vision, a change in the culture's defining mythology. We know a lot about non-agricultural societies, from those few that still exist, and from many others which were studied in the 1900s - as colonial expansion invaded new shores. Universally, these cultures view humanity as part of the world, interdependent with the Earth and with other species. Typically there are rituals to honor and thank a slain animal for the food it provides. None of these cultures see humanity's role as being to change the world, or to rule the world. Instead, they seek to find their place in the world, and to live in harmony with the world. The Agricultural Revolution came about when some tribe, already familiar with the sowing of crops, decided that harmony was not enough, that the world owed them more than that. They came to believe that the world was theirs to change, in order to produce more food for themselves. If wolves prey on cattle, then wolves can be hunted down in their lairs and slaughtered. If a forest stands in the way, then it can be cleared away to make room for more crops. It had always before been the gods who decided which species prospered and which perished, and where crops could grow and where they couldn't. But for this tribe, with their new cultural vision, these prerogatives had become their own. The tribe had become like gods, and the world was theirs to rule. Quinn, in The Story of B, calls this unknown tribe the Takers, or Tak. The Tak knew no more about growing crops, or herding animals, than did their neighbors, or had been known for countless centuries. But with their new myth of human dominion, they began pursuing agriculture and animal domestication with a new kind of totality. In this way they soon accumulated food surpluses, and their numbers began to grow. They then wanted more land to feed their growing population. So they began to expand, conquering or displacing their neighboring tribes. Just as they - being like gods - could clear away forests and hunt down wolves, so could the Taks clear away (or conquer) neighboring tribes. Not only totalitarian agriculture but also wars of conquest developed inevitably once the myth of dominion became the core cultural vision. By force and by emulation, the Taker vision began to spread. When it eventually reached the tribes of Abraham, the adoption of the vision was recorded in the book of Genesis, as the Garden of Eden story. The story tells us that the world was made for humanity to conquer, and the story omits a million years of prior human history. Adam and Eve spring forth from nowhere already imbued with the Tak vision. Part of the Tak myth is that humanity has always been like this - and Quinn calls that The Great Forgetting. Today, except for a few remote tribes, all of us everywhere on every continent and of every religion are descendents of tribes that adopted the Taker worldview. Not only do we believe the world was made for us to rule, but we also believe that conquering the world is human nature. Our ancestors all forgot that for a million years every culture - hundreds of thousands of them - believed and acted differently. And our faith in our myth was not shaken when we eventually learned that early man didn't share our vision after all. We simply expanded our myth, and decreed that early man was getting ready for his inevitable dominant role. He was developing the technology, and sharpening his skills - in training to inherit the world that had always been intended for him alone to rule. The Taker vision - our vision - is out of balance with the world. It is unsustainable. Instead of harmonizing with the world we are at war with the world, and by conquering the world we are destroying our own nest. Our unique cultural vision impels us to go forth and multiply, always growing and expanding. The Tak worldview has only been around for 500 generations - an infinitesimal fraction of human history - and in that short time our population has grown exponentially and we have brought the planet to the point of environmental collapse. Agriculture and technology are not the problem. Agriculture and technology pursued without respect for the Earth are the problem. Human nature is not the problem. A particular cultural myth - the Taker myth - is the problem. Competition is not the problem - all creatures compete for their place in the world, and some species don't survive. Relentless domination - where competitors are systematically and thoroughly exterminated - is the problem. A large human population is not the problem. An always-growing population, stressing ever more the balance of nature, is the problem. Can humanity find its way back to sanity? Can we abandon our disastrous Tak mythology and return, like the prodigal son, to become once again harmonious participants within the web of life? Before we try to answer the question, let's take a look at our more recent history. Any such changes will need to be made in the context of today's circumstances - and any such changes will surely be opposed by our current political regimes. We need to be fully aware of the obstacles that face us before we can understand how they can be overcome. Capitalism - the ultimate Taker system Not only has our culture been dominated by the Tak myth of man-over-nature, but it has also been dominated in another way - by ruling elites. From the very beginning, other people, as well as nature, have been among the 'creatures' subject to being dominated and subdued. Cain the farmer killed Able the shepherd and from that time forward those who stood in the way of expanding agricultural societies have perished. Internally, Taker societies have always been ruled by chiefs, kings, emperors, or aristocracies - even when those societies have called themselves 'democracies'. These ruling hierarchies have served to control the population and to transfer wealth to the ruling classes. Over the centuries, methods of wealth transfer have been improved and refined. One of the most effective such methods ever developed is capitalism. The story of capitalism begins in the late 1700s in Scotland and northern England, with the birth of the Industrial Revolution. Several particular ingredients came together there, which collectively launched the world onto its current path. One of those ingredients was an impressive series of mechanical inventions (e.g., the steam engine), leading to a multifold increase in the rate and scale of manufacture. Another ingredient was the nature of the British economy - which had for some time been organized around specialization and trade. Different regions of Britain had specialized in the production of different kinds of goods, first for the London market and later - as the British Empire expanded - for international markets. What this meant is that a more efficient producer could always find a market for his cheaper goods. Rather than being limited by the size of a local market, there was always the opportunity to capture a share of the huge trade that flowed through London. Thus when the tools of industrial manufacture came along, they could immediately be put to very profitable use. An enterprising entrepreneur who saw the potential of a new invention, and who invested boldly, was able to amass a huge fortune. He could set up a large-scale manufacturing plant, mass-produce goods below the cost of earlier methods, and rapidly capture a share of the large existing markets. A new way of creating fortunes had been born. Instead of slowly amassing wealth over a lifetime, or risking a voyage in search of treasure, there was now a systematic way to amass wealth relatively quickly. A person with money to invest could seek out the latest leading-edge inventions, develop a still-more efficient factory - and steal market share from his now-outdated rivals. A way had been found to use money to transform innovation into wealth. Out with the old methods, in with the new methods - and behind it always the investor - driving the process while amassing a fortune. This method of amassing wealth was eventually given the name capitalism. A capitalist is someone who invests money in an enterprise with the objective of receiving more in return at a later time. The consequences of these developments were far reaching. The availability of cheaper products, and the wealth of a few entrepreneurs, was the least of it. People's livelihoods were destroyed, as their locally based enterprises were forced out of business. They moved in their thousands to towns and became factory employees, usually under appalling conditions. The vitality of rural life was undermined and industrial cities arose, with their slums, crime, and diseases. From the very beginning, capitalist development has always led to societal disruption. A third ingredient of British society - its hierarchical class system - contributed to the way in which these changes unfolded. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy were long accustomed to being exploited, and being subject to the will of their 'betters'. Their domestication to hierarchy prepared them well for living in slum conditions and working under the thumb of oppressive bosses. But those at the top of the hierarchy were also affected, and they were in a better position to protect their interests against the changes that were being brought about by capitalist investors and entrepreneurs. Although the nature of the British economy served to promote capitalist success, there were also aspects of the economic regime which placed limits on that success. The dominant economic doctrine of the day was mercantilism, whose static definition of wealth did not fit well with the dynamics of capitalist innovation. Tariffs, taxes, and various kinds of restrictions hampered the growth of capitalism. The economic regime was designed to protect the wealth and power of the aristocratic class, and capitalist upstarts soon began to see the existing regime as an obstacle to their ambitions. The paradigm of capitalism had been wealth accumulation through innovation, and it was only natural that the creative energies of capitalists would turn eventually from technology to politics. In the early days, when markets seemed inexhaustible, the creative focus was on new technologies and larger-scale production. But as markets began to saturate, and growth slowed down, creative attention turned to the political barriers that stood in the way of further wealth accumulation. Capitalism became a political movement - lobbying for a new economic regime and fewer restrictions on its operations. In 1775 James Watt perfected his steam engine. In the very next year Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. The steam engine opened up whole new vistas of industrial development, including railroads and powered sea transport. But Wealth of Nations was of perhaps even greater historical significance - it helped turn the tide toward an entirely new economic regime, a regime that has transformed the world and which has led directly to what we now know as globalization. As economic analysis, Smith's work is certainly notable - but as a revolutionary manifesto - although unintended as such - his work was one of the most successful in all of history. Wealth of Nations presented an early example of what is now called systems analysis. Smith looked at the economy as a system within which buyers and sellers were actors, and whose interactions led to an overall system behavior. He sought to identify the motives that guided buyers and sellers, and to trace out how those motives affected system performance. He examined how economic policies and restrictions affected that performance, and sought to demonstrate that fewer restrictions would lead to enhanced performance - and thus increase the wealth of the British nation. Smith offered a model of a market economy - free of all but a few simple restrictions. He demonstrated that within such a market economy every buyer and seller could be left to pursue their own self-interest - and that the result would lead to a healthier, more productive economy. By persuasively arguing that a more liberal economic regime would benefit everyone, and that it would enhance the wealth of the British State, he helped undermine the old aristocracy's resistance to the further advance of capitalism. One can only feel sorry for Smith, who must to this day be turning in his grave. His intention was not to empower a new ruling elite, but rather to promote economic benefits for everyone. He was very careful in his analysis to point out that some restrictions were very necessary - not all restrictions should be removed from the marketplace. Unfortunately, once his work was published, he had no control over how it would be used. The capitalist movement embraced Smith's central notion of fewer restrictions, but paid little heed to those restrictions that were necessary for his market economy to operate effectively. While Smith envisioned a free and open marketplace, based on fair competition, ambitious capitalists were heading in quite a different direction. Inadvertently, Smith played the role of radical propagandist in the struggle for power between the traditional aristocracy, and the emerging capitalist class. Capitalism can be best understood not as an economic regime, but rather as an elite political movement. Industrialists, bankers, and financiers formed the core of the capitalist community, and as such they became an increasingly influential segment of society. Governments looked to this community when financing was needed for wars and other government endeavors, and it was from this community that Finance Ministers and other important government officials would typically be selected. The interests of government and the interests of capitalism became intertwined, and government policy increasingly came to favor the further advance of capitalism - and the further concentration of wealth and power into fewer hands. This is the scenario that unfolded first in Britain, and later in every other nation which adopted capitalism. Today, with globalization, we see this trend in its ultimate form: the establishment of a centralized world government (the WTO, IMF, etc.) which is totally dominated by the interests of global capital. In the final analysis, capitalism amounts to the usurpation of political power by a particular species of wealthy elite. Unlike aristocracies of old, which sought primarily to rule society, capitalist elites seek always to change society in order to create ever-more ways to increase their wealth. From their point of view, societies and populations are there to be exploited; they are simply a means to an end. Under capitalism, the Taker vision has been concentrated in this ruling elite. Like gods they refashion society at their whim, by means of free-trade treaties and IMF diktats. Globalization: the end of a 10,000-year cul-de-sac In many ways there is nothing unique or new about globalization. The centralization of power and the monopolization of markets is now occurring on a global scale - but the process is very much the same as what occurred earlier in each major capitalist nation. In the robber barons of the 1900s (Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Krupp, Carnegie, etc.), we can see the precursors of today's transnational corporations. The scale has changed, but the basic pattern of concentration of wealth and power remains the same. The elite-run media tries to convince us that the so-called free market is some kind of new invention, which should be given a chance to prove itself. In truth it is the same old rotten laissez-faire wine served up in new-terminology bottles. But there are also some unique aspects to globalization, and in these can be found hope for a better future for humanity - for turning the tide against capitalist domination. One of these aspects is the very success of the neoliberal project. Everywhere, capitalism is being given free reign - and its arrogant and brutal excesses are stirring up opposition all around the world. Hundreds of thousands of activist groups and civil-society organizations are struggling, each in its own way, against these excesses. In some cases the struggles are against symptoms, such as environmental destruction or human rights violations. In other cases - as in Chiapas and the streets of Seattle and Prague - the struggle aims closer to the core disease: capitalism and elite rule. But capitalism has exhibited such excesses in the past, has withstood resistance movements, and capitalist elites have managed to stay in power nonetheless. What is particularly unique about globalization - as regards hope for change - is its abandonment of the strong, prosperous, Western nation state. For the past two hundred years capitalism has employed an unbeatable formula to maintain its stranglehold over the world. That formula has been based on the relative contentment of Western populations, particularly the middle classes. Popular support maintained Western regimes and those regimes had the military might to dominate the rest of the world. This formula reached its culmination after World War II, when Western prosperity reached unprecedented heights. With neoliberalism and globalization, this successful formula is being abandoned. Western populations are being sacrificed to market forces and WTO tyranny. Our elite rulers have bet their future on the success of their centralized new-world-order regime. The political support base for capitalism has been fatally weakened, and that creates the conditions from which a truly massive movement for fundamental change is likely to emerge. People in the third world (or South) have long been struggling against capitalist imperialism. Many of us in West (or North) also struggled against imperialism, but our relatively privileged position prevented most of us from taking a radical stand against the root causes: capitalism and elite rule. Now that our privileges are being taken away, it is time for us to wake up and do something about it - shoulder to shoulder with our Southern brethren. Maintaining the status quo is no longer an option for us - the nature of capitalism is forcing revolutionary changes whether we like or not. In a few years the global regime will be so thoroughly established that it will be invincible. The people of the world have a choice. On the one hand we can surrender to global tyranny so that capitalism can continue its insane and destructive growth. On the other hand, we can assert our rights as free peoples. We can oust the elites from power and reorganize our societies so that they serve the needs and wishes of people - in harmony with the Earth - instead of facilitating the endless and reckless accumulation of wealth by a few. |