“Civilised”. The word conjures images of well-mannered, intelligent, capable. Not a savage – a higher form of human being. But look at the word itself to work out its true meaning. “Civilisation” means literally to make civil, i.e. to convert from society to the civic order.
The process of civilisation is to transform all social organisations into civic institutions – a transformation from meeting the needs of people to meeting the needs of power and property. From sharing power and resources in Society to centralising their control through the Institutions of the State, to build a privileged class of people. And then more power and more resources and so on through 2,600 years right up to now. Does civilisation sound like the project of a higher form of human being? Have we evolved to a higher form, or a lower form?
Similarly, a civilian is generally taken to mean a person not serving in the military. Correctly used according to its derivation, we are all civilians – whether we are soldiers or not – members of a civic order. All, that is, apart from tribespeople, the last of us who live under an order that can genuinely claim to be “Societas”.
Civilisation arrives at the same point in history as the arrival of a phonetic alphabet and with it, the ability to write. This moment came 50,000 years after the first two big ideas – language and government. Government, not as an institution but Government as a concept, an idea.
Civilisation should be to do with bringing higher human values – it should have nothing to do with centralising power. True civilisation sounds like it means organising for humanity, peace and sharing – not organising for war, stealing and privilege.
But the history of Imperialism, traces a line back to the City State of Athens in ancient Greece. This was given as the time when Civilisation and the State were born.
The Greek State is taught as “classical civilisation”. Anything before is “ancient history” – barbarism, unorganised and unchristian savages. Hence the feeling that civilisation has something to do with not being a savage any more. But these were not savages.
The hidden history lies between these two eras. Between Civilisation and a notional “Savagery”, the truth is coming out. It is called Barbarism, the time of the Barbarians. It is the time when Society, existing as a system called Gentilism, existed as the primary social structure before Civilisation subsumed it beneath the new Civil Order. 50,000 years when we had evolved beyond this purported savagery and had language, agriculture, Government, intelligence, culture, reason, innovation, music. But crucially, no concept of the idea that Land could be privately owned – that it could be owned by an individual to the exclusion of others.
Linguistics, genetics, archaeology, palaeontology, botany, anthropology and straight (hidden) history all give clues of how we were. Palaeontology tells of the discovery of the modern skull in Ethiopia dating as far back as 100,000 years (and another man ape that stood on its hind legs dating back 4.4 million years). 97,000 years of higher human achievement for Imperialist interests to remove from history, which they did. Only 4 books remain from an entire library belonging to the ancient Mayan tradition of Central America. The library (and all else) was destroyed on the instructions of the Spanish catholic church who used weapons to insist by force that they were the superior culture while acting like moral primitives.
Anthropology indicates ancient family structures as being extended families organised by kin and “genus” and upwards into tribes as proved by the American anthropologist Lewis Morgan in his books on consanguinity and “Ancient Society”, and developed by Friedrich Engels in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”. See the chapter “Genus” later as we approach the First Fix, the Primary Proposal.
Archaeology shows written symbols predating ancient hieroglyphics by 65,000 years. The reverse swastika has been found both in Tibet and Mexico dating back 70,000 years and is believed to represent a migration plan. Both also share the circle as their symbol of God and the square with the top right corner cut out as the compass. What right do we have to say that the symbols “G”, “O” and “D” are more an articulate expression of a deity than the simple “O”? The arrival of a phonetic alphabet does not imply that humans were not able to communicate in written form many millennia before it.
The proof surrounds us. We were, even then, intelligent, sentient beings quite unlike the portrayals of our very, very distant ancestors as wild animals. Those who would deny it are those currently granted the privilege of writing history as we are taught it, not as it was.
The Iroquois Indians of North America had even reached the level of organisation of a confederacy which is as far as modern Europe has progressed even today. Those who assembled the historical constitution of the United States studied and plagiarised the constitution of the Iroquois.
The native American nations were organised and survived, sustained, progressed. prospered and enjoyed in peace before the white Imperialist arrived. Disputes were resolved without the need for prisons, but with systems of sanctions on the individual and his peers to ensure responsible behaviour and social order.
The rules of the 5 tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy are summarised by Engels on page 126 of his classic text. Briefly, equality amongst people, tribal councils and confederate council; councillors drawn equally from the tribes, elected and deposed by them; decisions to be unanimous; confederate council can only be convened by the tribes, not by itself; meetings to be held in public with all having the right to speak; no council leader but 2 war chiefs.
Engels speaks of the strength of character of the Iroquois – their dignity, uprightness, courage and nobility – that springs from these social arrangements rooted in the notions of liberty, equality and fraternity. And all without police and prisons, monarchs and dukes, bureaucracies and a “Civil” Service.
Every mass culture creates its own archetypes. I shudder when I think of the number of driven sociopaths achieving high office in civilisation, of those with a job but no stake in the prosperity of the business, of those millions with no stake of any kind, and most of all of those millions even without food as their exports feed others. I do not see a system that works well. And I do see one that appeared to work much better. And that has the power to be something much, much more than a historical footnote.
Manfred Max-Neef, a Development Specialist, identifies nine basic human needs. Please take a moment to consider the effectiveness of global civilisation in securing the following obectives…
Subsistence
Protection
Affection
Understanding
Participation
Leisure
Creation
Identity
Freedom
And so, into the American society of the Iroquois arrives civilisation. Where they found the highest priority was the care of children, they replaced it with their highest value, the acquisition of land for themselves.
The white “Settlers” came to own the territory of the Iroquois. You can only be a “settler” on land that isn’t yours after slaughtering the current inhabitants, destroying their property, burning their crops, introducing them to strange and lethal foreign diseases etc. Anyone who attributes higher moral values to white European “settlers” would also have to deny the history of genocide against Indians, war on Mexicans and enslavement of Africans. They are not settlers. These are the first Imperialists to arrive on american soil.
Stolen land, acquired capital and slave labour (followed by cheap labour) make big profits and bigger houses from which to proclaim civilisation and apply false rituals of purity and hygiene – cleanliness is the obsessive trait of Western society that has its symbolic roots in the removal of blood and shame.
Dispossession is a crime that never went away, and never will until it is addressed. There can be no peace without justice. And justice means paying it all back.