The standard view of history is all flags, borders, battles and kings. When you take all of that away, it seems that the major issue is sex. Among of the oldest human-made objects are pornographic dolls. After this came the great age of the phallic symbol. The Old Testament, minus battles, prophets, and kings, looks like it belongs, well, on the internet.
Originally, we climbed around in trees and ate fruits - the garden of Eden. Then we left the forest, and things got tough. Giant cats not only tired to kill us, they were a deadly competitor for meat, a new food source of ours. Animals could outrun us, outfight us, see in the dark etc. We had brains, and our brains worked very well when we banded together in small groups, perhaps of about 100 individuals.
For big events, like hunts during migration season, we could team up with other groups. We found we could use fire and elaborate traps (American natives would chase buffaloes off a cliff, for example) to get meat, despite our physical inferiority to animals.
What we did is mysterious; the only remains are bones and rocks, and a few lucky pieces of cave wall art - things that didn't rot or fade.
Were we violent as nomads? There probably wasn't any scarcity of land etc. (though we tended to stick around river valleys, so there might have been). However, there is no scarcity of wealth today, yet people still horde and fight over it. It is possible.
When agriculture started, the first *evidence* of violence appears. Maces, shields, and other tools useless for hunting made their appearance, as well as giant walls (though obviously nomads wouldn't use those!) such as Jerioco, which had oversized walls (too large to be made for protection from animals) from as early as 7000BC.
Farmers must have been easy prey for raiders, always stuck in the same place. As protection they turned to authority (like post-roman citizens turned to feudalism). Next thing we knew, we were slaving to build palaces, and nothing has changed to this day. (The true "end of history" if you will).
I've got nothing much against nuclear families, but as a social institution, communities are better. Families are too small, too unequal (everyone is different ages, for example) and based on race. They also split up as the children grow older, and do nothing for the elderly and just plain individuals. The main problem is that they are incubators of authoritarianism.
Authority is self-perpetuating, because growing up under their influence creates submissive/authoritarian personalities -people who both "respect" authority (based on fear of punishment) and desire to exercise it themselves on subordinates. That is, when someone kicks you, your first urge is to kick someone else - the pecking order.
Just look at the hiearchyism: Dad at the top (admitted by southern baptists, silently accepted by others), followed by Mom, oldest kid, middle kid etc. Just too keep the pecking order fair there's a pet or two so the youngest kid has someone to torture. Notice how family-values propaganda (which is especially hellish to kids in divorced families) never seems to have two pets of the same species (or twins, or same-sex couples) - that suggests equality. A dog and cat and a fish keeps the pecking order intact. We see that all-American family everywhere, showing off their heirarchy, their house, their property etc. The idea of a community of equal individuals, unlinked by genes (ie, racism) with the ability to share is silenced in the deafening noise of pecking. Homophobia is based on "family values", since same-sex parents would have to be equals, therefore breaking the hierarchy.
Living this life makes one fear freedom It seems "natural" and "right" to them that society's institutions, from the authoritarian factory to the patriarchal family, should be pyramidal, with an elite at the top giving orders while those below them merely obey. Thus we have the spectacle of so-called "Libertarians" bleating about "liberty" while at the same time advocating factory fascism and privatized states. In short, authoritarian life reproduces itself with each generation - no matter what fashions and fads try to hide this.
Wilhelm Reich based his analysis on four of Freud's most solidly grounded discoveries, (no dream analysis here) namely,
(1) that there exists an unconscious part of the mind which has a powerful though irrational influence on behavior;
(2) that even the small child develops a desire for sexual pleasure which has nothing to do with love or procreation;
(3) that childhood sexuality along with the Oedipal conflicts that arise in parent-child relations under monogamy and patriarchy are usually repressed through fear of punishment or disapproval for sexual acts and thoughts;
(4) that this blocking of the child's natural sexual activity and extinguishing it from memory does not weaken its force in the unconscious, but actually intensifies it and enables it to manifest itself in various pathological disturbances and anti-social drives; and
(5) that, far from being of divine origin, human moral codes are derived from the educational measures used by the parents and parental surrogates in earliest childhood, the most effective of these being the ones opposed to childhood sexuality.
Bronislaw Malinowsli did research on the Trobriand Islanders, a woman-centered (matricentric) society in which children's sexual behavior was not repressed, and in which neuroses and perversions as well as authoritarian institutions and values were almost non-existent.
Reich came to the conclusion that patriarchy and authoritarianism originally developed when tribal chieftains began to get economic advantages from a means such as certain type of marriage ("cross-cousin marriages") entered into by their sons. In such marriages, the brothers of the son's wife were obliged to pay a dowry to her in the form of continuous tribute, thus enriching her husband's clan (i.e. the chief's). By arranging many such marriages for his sons (which were usually numerous due to the chief's privilege of polygamy), the chief's clan could accumulate wealth. Thus society began to be divided into ruling and subordinate clans based on wealth.
To secure the permanence of these "good" marriages, strict monogamy (family values) was required. However, it was found that monogamy was impossible to maintain without the repression of childhood sexuality, since, as statistics show, children who are allowed free expression of sexuality often do not adapt successfully to life-long monogamy - they are to busy being free.
Therefore, along with class stratification and private property, authoritarian child-rearing methods were created for the advantage of the chiefs (who then became kings, and who are now stockholders).
Thus there is a historical correlation between, on the one hand, pre-patriarchal society, primitive democracy (or "work democracy," to use Reich's expression), economic equality, and sexual freedom, and on the other, patriarchal society, a property-based economy, economic class differences, and sexual repression. As Reich puts it:
"Every tribe that developed from a [matricentric] to a patriarchal organization had to change the sexual structure of its members to produce a sexuality in keeping with its new form of life. This was a necessary change because the shifting of power and of wealth from the democratic gens [maternal clans] to the authoritarian family of the chief was mainly implemented with the help of the suppression of the sexual strivings of the people. It was in this way that sexual suppression became an essential factor in the division of society into classes.
"Marriage, and the lawful dowry it entailed, became the axis of the transformation of the one organisation into the other. In view of the fact that the marriage tribute of the wife's gens to the man's family strengthened the male's, especially the chief's, position of power, the male members of the higher ranking gens and families developed a keen interest in making the nuptial ties permanent. At this stage, in other words, only the man had an interest in marriage. In this way natural work-democracy's simple alliance, which could be easily dissolved at any time, was transformed into the permanent and monogamous marital relationship of patriarchy. The permanent monogamous marriage became the basic institution of patriarchal society -- which it still is today. To safeguard these marriages, however, it was necessary to impose greater and greater restrictions upon and to depreciate natural genital strivings" [_The Mass Psychology of Fascism_,p. 90]
With sexual repression came various anti-social drives (sadism, destructive impulses, rape fantasies, etc.), which themselves had to be stopped with yet more oppression. The most effective way was compulsive morality, which took the place the natural self-regulation that one finds in pre-patriarchal societies. In this way, sex began to be regarded as "dirty," "diabolical," "wicked," etc. -- which it had indeed become through the creation of secondary drives (suddenly we needed Moses' 34 chapter _Deuteronomy_, which we had formerly survived without). Thus:
"The patriarchal- authoritarian sexual order that resulted from the revolutionary processes of latter-day [matricentrism] (economic independence of the chief's family from the maternal gens, a growing exchange of goods between the tribes, development of the means of production, etc.) becomes the primary basis of authoritarian ideology by depriving the women, children, and adolescents of their sexual freedom, making a commodity of sex and placing sexual interests in the service of economic subjugation. From now on, sexuality is indeed distorted; it becomes diabolical and demonic and has to be curbed" [Ibid. p. 88].
One patriarchy has been established, authoritarian society based of the psychological crippling of its members through sexual suppression isn't far behind:
"The moral inhibition of the child's natural sexuality, the last stage of which is the severe impairment of the child's *genital* sexuality, makes the child afraid, shy, fearful of authority, obedient, 'good,' and 'docile' in the authoritarian sense of the words. It has a crippling effect on man's rebellious forces because every vital life-impulse is now burdened with severe fear; and since sex is a forbidden subject, thought in general and man's critical faculty also become inhibited. In short, morality's aim is to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order. Thus, the family is the authoritarian state in miniature, to which the child must learn to adapt himself as a preparation for the general social adjustment required of him later. Man's authoritarian structure -- this must be clearly established -- is basically produced by the embedding of sexual inhibitions and fear" in the person's bioenergetic structure. [Ibid., p. 30]
In this way, by damaging the individual's power to rebel and think for him/herself, the inhibition of childhood sexuality and indeed other forms of free, natural expression of the joy of living (e.g. shouting, crying, running, jumping, etc.) -becomes the most important weapon in creating reactionary personalities.
This is why every reactionary politician puts such an emphasis on "strengthening the family" and promoting "family values": patriarchy, compulsive monogamy, premarital chastity, corporal punishment, (All of which Christ didn't place high on his priorities: unmarried at the age of 30, his family was a group of drifters including a prostitute - while he advocated passive resistence to make corporal punishment useless).
"Since authoritarian society reproduces itself in the individual structures of the masses with the help of the authoritarian family, it follows that political reaction has to regard and defend the authoritarian family as *the* basis of the "state, culture, and civilisation. . . ." [It is] *political reaction's germ cell*, the most important centre for the production of reactionary men and women. Originating and developing from definite social processes, it becomes the most essential institution for the preservation of the authoritarian system that shapes it" [Op. cit., p. 104-105]
The nuclear family is the most essential institution for this purpose because children are most vulnerable to psychological maiming in their first few years, from the time of birth to about six years of age, during which time they are mostly in the charge of their parents. Schools and churches then continue the process of conditioning once the children are old enough to be away from their parents, but they are generally unsuccessful the foundation has already been set by the nuclear family. Thus A.S. Neill observes that "the nursery training is very like the kennel training. The whipped child, like the whipped puppy, grows into an obedient, inferior adult. And as we train our dogs to suit our own purposes, so we train our children. In that kennel, the nursery, the human dogs must be clean; they must feed when we think it convenient for them to feed. I saw a hundred thousand obedient, fawning dogs wag their tails in the Templehof, Berlin, when in 1935, the great trainer Hitler whistled his commands [_Summerhill: a Radical Approach to Child Rearing_, p. 100].
The family is also the main agency of repression during adolescence, when sexual energy reaches its peak. This is because the vast majority of parents provide no private space for adolescents to pursue undisturbed sexual relationships with their partners, but in fact actively discourage such behaviour, (save it for marriage") often demanding complete abstinence -at the very time when abstinence is most impossible! Moreover, since teenagers are economically dependent on their parents under capitalism, with no housing or dormitories allowing for sexual freedom, young people have no alternative but to submit to irrational parental demands for abstention from premarital sex. Of course these attitudes trickle down, as words such as "slut" become part of teenage vocabulary.
The demand for the nuclear family is not the only case of capitalist authoritarianism crushing sexual freedom. In ancient (and not so ancient) times women where considered property, first of their fathers, then of their husbands. The institution of the dowery was a lightly camouflaged business transaction and the piece of property changed hands. The property could be "broken" if her virginity was lost - one scar of this is the concept of "statutory rape" in which consensual sex between a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old is considered rape if the girl's parents don't approve.
Of course, any methods to fight teenage sexuality (like banning condom machines, which is like banning kleenex to cure the common cold) are absurd. Furtive sex is found the back seats of cars, gang rapes, etc. As Reich found, when sexuality is repressed and laden with anxiety, the result is always some degree of what he terms "orgastic impotence": the breeding ground for neuroses and reactionary attitudes.
Meanwhile, "primitive" societies, such as the Trobriand Islanders, provided special community houses where teenagers could go with their partners to enjoy undisturbed sexual relationships -- and this with society's full approval. (Though this came to an abrupt halt when authoritarians and patriarchy appeared in those societies...Coincidence?)
Of course, such institution would be taken for granted in a totally democratic society, as any rants about "sluts", "tarts", "whores", and "debauchery" and hardly words of the free.
Nationalistic feelings (those things that make us die chasing flags) can also be traced to the authoritarian family. A child's attachment to its mother is, of course, natural and is the basis of all family ties. Subjectively, the emotional core of the concepts of homeland and nation (Russia is the "Motherland" while others are the "Fatherland") are mother and family, since the mother is the homeland of the child, just as the family is the "nation in miniature." According to Reich, who carefully studied the mass appeal of Hitler's "National Socialism," nationalistic sentiments are a direct continuation of the family tie and are rooted in a *fixated* tie to the mother. As Reich points out, although infantile attachment to the mother is natural, *fixated* attachment is not, but is a social product. In puberty, the tie to the mother would make room for other attachments, i.e., natural sexual relations, *if* the unnatural sexual restrictions imposed on adolescents did not cause it to be externalized. It is in the form of this socially conditioned externalisation that fixation on the mother becomes the basis of nationalist feelings in the adult; and it is only at this stage that it becomes a reactionary social force.
Later writers who have followed Reich in analyzing the process of creating reactionary character structures have broadened the scope of his analysis to include other important inhibitions, besides sexual ones, that are imposed on children and adolescents. Rianne Eisler, for example, in her book _Sacred Pleasure_, stresses that it is not just a sex-negative attitude but a *pleasure*-negative attitude that creates the kinds of personalities in question. Denial of the value of pleasurable sensations permeates our unconscious, as reflected, for example, in the common idea that to enjoy the pleasures of the body is the "animalistic" (and hence "bad") side of human nature, as contrasted with the "higher" pleasures of the mind and "spirit."
By such dualism, which denies a spiritual aspect to the body, people are made to feel guilty about enjoying any pleasurable sensations -- a conditioning that does, however, prepare them for lives based on the sacrifice of pleasure (or indeed, even of life itself) under capitalism and statism, with their requirements of mass submission to alienated labour, exploitation, military service to protect ruling-class interests, and so on. And at the same time, authoritarian ideology emphasizes the value of suffering, as for example through the glorification of the tough, insensitive warrior hero, who suffers (and inflicts "necessary" suffering on others ) for the sake of some pitiless ideal.
Eisler also points out that there is "ample evidence that people who grow up in families where rigid hierarchies and painful punishments are the norm learn to suppress anger toward their parents. There is also ample evidence that this anger is then often deflected against traditionally disempowered groups (such as minorities, children, and women)" [Ibid., p. 187]. This repressed anger then becomes fertile ground for reactionary politicians, whose mass appeal usually rests in part on scapegoating minorities for society's problems. (I should add that authoritarians may be a minority, but it is not them that I'm opposed to - it is the system that creates supports them).
As the psychologist Else Frenkel-Brunswick documents in _The Authoritarian Personality_, people who have been conditioned through childhood abuse to surrender their will to the requirements of feared authoritarian parents, also tend to be very susceptible as adults to surrender their will and minds to authoritarian leaders. "In other words, at the same time that they learn to deflect their repressed rage against those they perceive as weak, they also learn to submit to autocratic or 'strong-man' rule. Moreover, having been severely punished for any hint of rebellion (even 'talking back' about being treated unfairly), they gradually also learn to deny to themselves that there was anything wrong with what was done to them as children-- and to do it in turn to their own children" [Ibid., p. 187].
Families involve children. Authorities likes children, they are the next generation to exploit, and make excellent soldiers to replace those sent to their deaths. Besides, every authoritarian has to cuddle babies as part of their propaganda.
It's hard to revolt when you have children. The Gestapo knew this - when someone was willing to suffer torture and die rather than submit, they would simply threaten the victim's family.
Of course, there's also the excuse to impose censorship:
We have all sorts of unwritten (or written, in some cases) "rules" about sex, like that you can only have one partner at a time, etc. It's taking a fun game and ruining it by putting referees all over the place. Now we've got a industry of daytime talk shows and magazines to ask us "Is your sex life normal enough?"
In some cultures nobody gets jealous when someone has sex with their partner. (perhaps it could be considered a compliment!). Swingers were the norm is Eskimo society. Yet in our society, the main cause of divorce is different sexual needs - when one needs more than the other. The obvious way to solve this problem would be to let whoever's still hungry after dinner go to a restaurant - not split up the whole family and leave the kids suicidal.
People are formed by their environment - for example, some Muslim women considered not wearing a veil to be "naked". When some countires outlawed the veil, these women literally never left their homes. They're probably still there.
How on earth could a human being be considered cheap, or expensive for that matter? Aren't all people priceless? (Not according to capitalism, of course. What's your net worth? That's how much property you own. A person you doesn't own is "net worthless" - though that's not a common title for business magazines etc). Presumably the value of a woman is measured in her ability to deny sex, just like the property owner's net worth is grown by denying others access to his property without making an unfair (profitable) deal. Though no possessive father would admit it, the ancient lie that females are property, lowered in value if they lead free sexual lives, is alive today. Every time someone says the word "slut" they are making a contribution to the age old tradition of females being rape-slaves to those with property. It may not be exactly the same as today, but as I said before - what can be reformed can be deformed. We must forget forever this propertyist system, which can, and most likely will, return to its ancient incarnations at any time.
Sexual freedom is closely linked to other freedoms. If leaders who start by burning books end up burning people, leaders who start by barring passions end up barring souls.
Is imperialism a thing of the past?
What happened to the economy in the late 70's and early 80's?
What caused the 1982 recession?
Hasn't "fourty years of liberalism ended in failure"?
What are some examples of "free market" experiments?
Does the US have the highest standard of living in the world?
What caused the great depression, and why did it last so long?
Can I see some historical economic statisticts?
Yet I can't remember what I had for breakfast.
The future:
What would an anarchist society be like?
Will technology get rid of governments?
Some things to think about
Lower class diseases: hypertension, neuralgia, arthritis, tuberculosis.
Upper class diseases: hay fever, hives, colitis. Upper classes tend to be thinner than lower classes (Robert D Smither _Competitors and Comrades_ p43) This might have something to do with America's thinness obsession. "Weight-loss drugs" once consisted of capsules with tapeworms inside. The wonders of deregulation.
Upper class diseases were once fashionable. Now that's rational self-interest!