The Socialist Phenomenon 2.3

Part 7 - State Socialism, The Ancient Orient (Mesopotamia)

The following is part of a series looking at The Socialist Phenomenon by Igor Shafarevich (1923-2017), first published in 1975 under the title Sotsializm kak iavlenie mirovoi istorii by YMCA Press. My intention is to offer summaries only - I cannot hope to provide robust commentary - Shafarevich provides a masterful historical analysis of socialism in a rare systematic and scientific manner. He was a mathematician of some significance in Russia and applied a similar disciplined and objective approach in his study of socialism. He, like Solzhenitsyn, believed that socialism was ultimately nihilistic and motivated by a death drive that destroys individualism.

For those interested you can find the full English translation here http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html

Last time we were talking about the Socialism of the Jesuits in Paraguay:

The Socialist Phenomenon 2.2

Shafarevich continues his survey of state socialism, or at least the hallmarks of socialism, by looking to the ancient Orient and in this particular section, on Mesopotamia.

Life in ancient Sumer, toward the end of the fourth and beginning of the third millennia B.C., revolved around the local temple. Peasants worked the land around the temple as tenants and the temple provided resources like working animals and seed. But into the third millennium small kingdoms formed, the temples within each kingdom remained the hubs of the economies. Workers, under the supervision of the temple, tilled the land and received monthly allowances from the temple stores. The temple acted as a sort of central control and the people were divided up into various classes as specified on tablets:

Here we meet such groups as "porters" and "men-who-do-not-raise-their-eyes" (interpreted as unskilled laborers), "slave women and their children," "men who receive their allowances according to separate tablets." All received approximately the same allowance. In the lists, workers figure in parties headed by a foreman--"the chief farmer ." Men did not receive subsistence for their families, but appeared only as individuals. Women and children are mentioned separately; orphans formed a special category. The workers seem to have had no private holdings; they could not store provisions for themselves, but neither were they obliged to buy what they needed elsewhere. The temple storehouses provided them with all the necessities. Tablets record the names of the party chief, the recipient and the dispensing official. Evidently, workers (usually every month) came to the storehouses in parties to get their rations, which consisted primarily of grain. Another group consisted of "men getting sustenance." They received allowances less frequently (three or four times a year), but as a rule the amount was proportionally larger. In addition, they received plots of land, which in most cases were tiny. These plots were redistributed frequently. (65: p. 174) The most numerous category in this group consisted of "shub-Iugal," who also worked on the temple estate under "chief farmers." They carried out irrigation work and performed military duties. They received plows and grain for working the allotted plots from the temple storehouses. Their position changed from time to time.

Management was centralised and teams of workers laboured under a chief farmer, rather similar to the Inca we covered a few posts previously. All product of their work was brought to the administration and the storehouse. All the equipment was kept in the central store as well and everything was recorded in great detail.

The same methods of central control was applied to the farming of livestock, as was the work of artisans. The things manufactured by the artisans was received by the central estate in exchange for food supplies.

It is unlikely that this temple economy was the entire economy of the little kingdom to which it belonged. Some historians say that this system accounted for half of the economy of the region and other, semi-independent farmers, made up the rest of the economy.

After a time of upheaval (during the 25th-24th Centuries B.C.) that saw the conquest of Mesopotamia by the Akkadian king Sargon, the region once again became united under Utuchegal in the 22nd Century B.C. and then under King Ur-Nammu. This was the 3rd dynasty of Ur. A huge centralised state with a single economy enveloped Mesopotamia, Elam and Assyria, managed by an imperial bureaucracy. This bureaucracy, consisting of the administrators, war chiefs, priests and bureaucrats, lived off state funding and administered everything - again, all finely detailed on local records.

This was truly an age of bureaucracy with accounting, record keeping, mapping, and registrations detailing every aspect of this state run venture.

In the crafts, a new form of large state workshop appeared. In Ur, eight big workshops were united under the supervision of a single person. This manager inscribed all accounts (submitted several times a month). The products of the workshop's went to the state stores, from which the manager received, in turn, raw materials and half-finished goods, as well as the craftsmen's provisions. For instance, wool and linen fabrics from the weavers went to sewers for borders and hems, then to fullers and finally to the storehouses. Plain clothing was made for the workers and a better sort of dress for administrators. Reports from the workshops contain data on the output, expenditure on linen, expenditure on grain for the sustenance of the craftsmen and figures on numbers absent and deceased… Craftsmen were divided into parties headed by foremen. Workers could be transferred from one foreman to another. The allowance a craftsman received depended on his production (relative to the norm) and his skill. Chiefs of workshops could obtain manpower from outside in case of necessity. By the same token, craftsmen from the state workshops could be sent to work on the land, in river transportation, etc. The same term (gurushi) was often used to denote craftsmen and farm workers.

Other industries, like ship building, were state run and organised in a similar fashion, and all trade was too, monopolised by the state. There does not seem to be any indication of private land holdings, but there was private property due to bills of sale that indicated the sale of children sold into slavery. But for the most part, the significant trading was a state enterprise.

The exploitation of workers took a heavy toll with high mortality rates being recorded - 20-25 percent as a general mortality rate and for field work up to 35 percent. The state machine, it seems, exacts a high price to maintain its momentum.

In 2007 B.C. the whole affair collapses and Ur crumbled into small principalities until King Hammurabi in Babylon in 1760 B.C.

The social structure of Sumer kingdoms seems to have been a mix of semi-dependent and dependent workers under a centralised bureaucracy for a state owned and run venture. The elites ran the show and the vast majority had little choice but to serve the system. A system that was tightly controlled with every detail recorded by scribes.

So aspects of the socialist phenomenon can be seen here, as it was on the other side of the planet for the Inca Empire. Both displaying similar characteristics of central control by an elite class ruling a serfdom. Of course it’s not socialism per say, but Shafarevich is pointing to precursors, precedents, to roots of what will become the socialism we know today.

I cannot but help to think of the many Sumer scribes, detailing everything going on in the kingdom, is akin to the surveillance state we are finding ourselves in today - every little bit of data being sucked up into the belly of the state. I’m sure if Ur had the technology we have today, it would resemble a type of modern ‘surveillance capitalism’.

Well that’s just a short glimpse of Mesopotamian life. Next time we will have a similarly short glimpse of Egypt as it pertains to the socialist phenomenon.