Writing, Knowledge and Power in the Early Hydraulic Societies
Discussion
Elin Whitney-Smith:
"In the hydraulic societies which became the first city states, political power was based on the engineering knowledge used to build irrigation projects (North, 1981}. This knowledge was kept by the priest-kings and was the source of their power. In order to maintain power these early states invented the first information technology? writing (Ascher & Ascher, 1982; Canerio, 1970; Jones, G. & Kautz, 1981; Flannery, 1973? Lannning, 1967, Trigger, 1982? White, 1949; Cowgill, 1975; Wenke, 1984)
Writing was useful for recording the knowledge necessary to keep power. Writing can be seen as the first attempt to make information into a commodity which could be stored, passed from one to another and kept from those who were not members of the literate classes. This meant that in order to control certain information it was only necessary to restrict education. This helped the established hierarchy create the perception of the state as the protector and source of wealth, knowledge and all things necessary for life - physical and psychological. Citizenship gave people the right to share in the wealth but did not give them rights to own the means of production. Participation in the power structure was reserved to the ruling (knowledge owning) class by definition.
In these early city states the members of the elite had a paternal responsibility to the members of the group. The Bible story of Joseph's interpretation of the pharaoh's dream will serve as an illustration of how this relationship may have been perceived. The existence of the dream is an indication that the Pharaoh was expected to be privy to knowledge which others did not have. The dream told of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. The actions of the Pharaoh in storing food from the years of plenty to be used in times of starvation shows that it was presumed to be the responsibility of the Pharaoh to insure that the people did not suffer. He could do this because he had superior knowledge and he had the power to allocate the use of wealth - the distribution of food. In contrast, it was not presumed to be a responsibility of western heads of state after the rise of capitalism to see to the feeding of the people in famines. In addition, the acceptance of Joseph into the ruling elite based on his knowledge indicates that knowledge was seen as providing an entre to the ruling class.
The story also shows how labor was determined by the elite: the children of Israel eventually became slaves in Egypt because of the group they belonged to, not because of their activities or their skills. Because security was no longer based on information shared by the all the people, but on the accumulation of material goods, it made sense for those who were stronger or more numerous to take goods from those who were weaker. Increased population also made the taking of land and labor - in the form of captive slaves - economically beneficial. This made physical security and military power a perceived need which allowed for an elaboration of the stratified state by creating another elite - the military - and further concentrated power in the hands of the elite who administered the whole (Schmookler, 1984). The culmination of this world view was Rome.
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There are a few points in this whirlwind look at world history which I want to emphasize. The basic shift from the perception of the world as bountiful to a world of want preceded the invention of writing - the first information technology - and yet is dependent on it. This led to the perception that information was a source of power rather than something to be shared. This created a condition where it made sense to make information into a commodity and to control it as if it were a thing.
The combination of these two perceptual shifts - from the world of plenty to the world of scarcity and from information as a thing to share to information as a source of power - created a world in which elites used the innovations of their culture to increase the wealth of the whole. Much of the wealth was distributed by the elites to be used by all who were considered members or citizens. But what we would consider the activities of ownership, the decisions about the use of wealth, were in the hands of the elites. Therefore, they benefited most from the production of wealth in the culture. The elites were able to live better, had access to education and the arts, and made the decisions about what would be developed and what would not. This last decision-making ability enabled the elites to direct the course of innovation and therefore the direction of development.
The hierarchical organizational structure of the early city states - where decision making power is limited to one person or a small elite - emerged from the relatively egalitarian organizational structure of the hunting/gathering band - where decision making power is shared by most of the members. This seeming "about face" becomes more understandable when we realize the implications of the perceptual shifts which must have occurred.
The story may have gone something like this: In a world which has all of a sudden become perceived as poor, people would be willing to change some of their habits to work for a more stable resource base. Initially this did not involve a massive change in behavior. They only had to plant some seeds, remember where they were and then return for the harvest. It must have made sense to have some ordering of this activity. The shaman or grandmother, who would be the natural equivalent of a long term data base, may have directed the work and allocated goods. From this perspective the priest-king is an extension of this role, of one who allocates goods and labor for the good of the whole. Over time increased reliance on crops instead of hunted and gathered foodstuff eroded the traditional egalitarian organization. This occurred because the scale of the organization changed as populations grew. All the members of an emerging city state were no longer known or related personally to the "chief" or ruler. This meant that the nature of the relationships changed from a loosely ordered organization based on common ownership and common information control, to a paternalistic hierarchy in which information is controlled and resources are allocated by the central power structure (Gailey, 1987; White, 1949; Service, 1975)."