Gordon Solberg

Americans have traditionally had a limited grasp of history beyond the superficial “authorized version” we learn in school. In recent years this situation has become even more extreme, because 70% of Americans get their news from the cable news networks, where yesterday’s news is quickly replaced by today’s and tomorrow’s spin. Americans live in a timeless reality which is always changing, but seems to remain the same. Having little sense of history, we are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again.

I would like to contribute a very brief overview of history, concentrating on the perpetual conflict between the “elite,” who own most of the wealth, and the “rabble” -- everybody else.

Until the establishment of agriculture 10,000 years ago, humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Possessions were few, and limited to what could be carried from place to place. This all changed with agriculture. Now, for the first time, humans were sedentary (and thus easily controlled), and produced surpluses of grain and other food which had to be stored and defended. These surpluses meant unprecedented power for whoever was able to control them, and the first elite was born. For the first time, organized war became possible.

One fascinating fact is that the socio-economic system we have in modern America goes all the way back to prehistoric times. The true elite (typically 1% of the population) is far too small to dominate the other 99%, so they have always depended on “enablers” to enforce their will upon the rest of the population. There are three classes of enablers: a) the priesthood, who promote the “authorized mythology”; b) government bureaucrats, who collect taxes, administer the realm, and settle disputes between the rabble; c) the military -- aided in modern times by police -- who defend the realm from invaders, and also keep the rabble under control.

There are dozens of ancient civilizations that fit this pattern -- Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Rome, the Aztecs. In each of these cultures, a small elite class, with the aid of their enablers, dominated the rest of the citizens, and controlled most of the resources. This is exactly the system we have in America today.

Most of human history since the rise of agriculture has been a continual nightmare of war and exploitation, with elites always in control. Although they comprise most of the poplulation, the rabble have typically been unorganized and relatively helpless. They have lived as peasant farmers or small-time artisans. In times of war, they were pressed into military service, where they died in vast numbers.

This pattern was modified somewhat during the 16th century, when European sailing vessels discovered that there was a whole world to exploit. For the first time, the amount of wealth flowing into Europe was greater than the elites could absorb, and a middle class formed from the surplus wealth.

When the English invaded North America, they found a continent unbelievably rich in natural resources -- timber, minerals, fish and game, abundant water, rich soil. A peasant could move out to the frontier, make a primitive living, and be freer than any of his ancestors had been for millennia. Middle class and elite Englishmen who moved to America found themselves amazingly wealthy. Before long, a new American elite formed, many of them originally from lower-status stock. They chafed under the constraints the English elite imposed upon them. They wanted to be free on their own terms.

Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of America should be required reading for all high school students. He maps out the true dynamics of the American Revolution. We have all been raised on the standard view of the revolution, in which American patriots became tired of taxation without representation, and threw off English dominance.

Actually, it was the American elite who grew weary of English dominance. Many rich Americans were far wealthier than their upper-class English conterparts, and were tired of being treated like second-class citizens. They were tired of paying taxes (sound familiar?). It was the American elite, led by the wealthy George Washington, who hired and trained the Revolutionary Army.

After the Revolutionary War was won, a political system was organized that gave most of the power to the elite, but offered enough concessions to the upper middle class that they would identify with the elite rather than the rabble. A new era, and an unimaginably wealthy plutocracy, was born.

Vast fields of coal and iron ore were discovered, and so this country was built on steel -- steel rails, steel locomotives, steel skyscrapers. It was also built on the backs of a limitless supply of immigrant labor -- people who were so grateful to move to America, they were willing to work for almost nothing. Exploiting them were the elite, the filthy rich, for whom enough is never enough.

(Next issue: PERPETUAL WAR)

May 2, 2003
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