Cannibals and Kings (11 page)

For the young girl, Freud envisioned a parallel but fundamentally different trauma. A girl’s sexuality is also initially directed toward her mother, but at the phallic stage she makes a shocking discovery: she lacks a penis. The girl “holds her mother responsible for her castrated condition” and thus “transfers her love to her father because he has the valued organ which she aspires to share with him.” But her love for her father and for other men “is mixed with a feeling of envy because they possess something she lacks.” So while males must work out their Oedipus complex by learning how to
express hostility against others, girls must learn to compensate for their lack of a penis by accepting a subordinate status and by having babies (which symbolically stand for the lost penis).

Although this scenario might seem sheer poppycock, anthropological research has shown that there is widespread if not universal occurrence of psychodynamic patterns that resemble Oedipal strivings—at least in the minimal sense of sexually charged hostility between older and younger generation males and penis envy among females. Bronislaw Malinowski pointed out that even among the matrilineal, avunculocal Trobriand Islanders, Oedipal rivalries exist—although not exactly in the form Freud had anticipated since the authority figure during childhood is the mother’s brother rather than the father. Freud was definitely on to something, but unfortunately his causal arrows were running backwards. What is poppycock is the idea that the Oedipal situation is caused by human nature rather than by human cultures. No wonder the Oedipus situation is so widespread. All of the conditions for creating castration fears and penis envy are present in the male supremacy complex—in the male monopoly over weaponry and the training of males for bravery and combat roles, in female infanticide and the training of females to be the passive rewards for “masculine” performance, in the patrilineal bias, in the prevalence of polygyny, competitive male sports, intense male puberty rituals, ritual uncleanliness of menstruating women, in the bride-price, and in many other male-centered institutions. Obviously, wherever the objective of childrearing is to produce aggressive, “masculine,” dominant males and passive, “feminine,” subordinate females, there will be something like a castration fear between males in adjacent generations—they will feel insecure about their
manliness—and something like penis envy among their sisters, who will be taught to exaggerate the power and significance of the male genitalia.

All of this leads to but one conclusion: The Oedipus complex was not the cause of war; war was the cause of the Oedipus complex (keeping in mind that war itself was not a first cause but a derivative of the attempt to control ecological and reproductive pressures). This may sound like a hopeless chicken and egg problem, but there are excellent scientific reasons for rejecting the Freudian priorities. Starting with the Oedipus complex, one cannot explain variations in the intensity and scope of warfare—why some groups are more warlike than others and why some practice external forms and others internal forms of raiding. Nor can one explain why the complex of male supremacist institutions varies in substance and strength. Nor, starting with the Oedipus complex, can one explain the origin of agriculture, the divergent paths of Old and New World intensifications and depletions, or the origin of the state. But by starting with reproductive pressure, intensification, and depletion, one can understand both the constant and variable aspects of warfare. And from a knowledge of the causes of the variations in warfare, one can reach an understanding of the causes of the variations in family organization, sex hierarchies, and sex roles, and thence of both the constant and variable features of the Oedipus complex. It is an established principle in the philosophy of science that if one must choose between two theories the theory that explains more variables with the least number of independent unexplained assumptions deserves priority.

This point is worth pursuing because different philosophical and practical consequences adhere to each theory. On the one hand, Freudian theory closely resembles
the
war as human nature
approach. It makes homicidal aggression seem inevitable. At the same time it shackles both men and women with a biological imperative (“anatomy is destiny”), therewith clouding and constricting the movement to achieve sexual parity. Although I have argued that anatomy destines males for training to be fierce and aggressive if there is war, I have not said that anatomy or genes or instinct or anything else makes war inevitable. Merely because all human beings in the world today and in the known past have lived in warmaking sexist societies or societies affected by war-making sexist societies is not reason enough to cast human nature in the image of the savage characteristics which are necessary for waging successful war. The fact that warfare and sexism have played and continue to play such prominent roles in human affairs does not mean that they must continue to do so for all future time. War and sexism will cease to be practiced when their productive, reproductive, and ecological functions are fulfilled by less costly alternatives. Such alternatives now lie within our grasp for the first time in history. If we fail to make use of them, it will be the fault not of our natures but of our intelligence and will.

In most band and village societies before the evolution of the state, the average human being enjoyed economic and political freedoms which only a privileged minority enjoy today. Men decided for themselves how long they would work on a particular day, what they would work at—or if they would work at all. Women, too, despite their subordination to men, generally set up their own daily schedules and paced themselves on an individual basis. There were few routines. People did what they had to do, but the where and when of it was not laid out by someone else. No executives, foremen, or bosses stood apart, measuring and counting. No one said how many deer or rabbits you had to catch or how many wild yams you had to dig up. A man might decide it was a good day to string his bow, pile on thatch, look for feathers, or lounge about the camp. A woman might decide to look for grubs, collect firewood, plait a basket, or visit her mother. If the cultures of modern band and village peoples can be relied upon to reveal the past, work got done this way for tens of thousands of years. Moreover, wood for the bow, leaves for the thatch, birds for the feathers, logs for the grubs, fiber for the basket—all were there for everyone to take. Earth, water, plants, and game were communally owned. Every man and woman held title to an equal share of nature.
Neither rent, taxes, nor tribute kept people from doing what they wanted to do.

With the rise of the state all of this was swept away. For the past five or six millennia, nine-tenths of all the people who ever lived did so as peasants or as members of some other servile caste or class. With the rise of the state, ordinary men seeking to use nature’s bounty had to get someone else’s permission and had to pay for it with taxes, tribute, or extra labor. The weapons and techniques of war and organized aggression were taken away from them and turned over to specialist-soldiers and policemen controlled by military, religious, and civil bureaucrats. For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery.

How did this happen? To answer, I shall have to draw a distinction between how it first happened in particular world regions and how it happened thereafter. I shall have to distinguish, in the terminology suggested by Morton Fried, between the origin of “pristine” and “secondary” states. A pristine state is one in which there is no preexisting state stimulating the process of state formation. To be sure, to the extent that no society exists in a vacuum, all developmental processes are influenced by interaction with other societies, but “there are situations in which none of the external cultures are any more complex than the one being considered, and these situations can be regarded as pristine.”

Archaeologists are moving toward agreement that there were at least three centers of pristine state development, and possibly as many as eight. The three definite instances are Mesopotamia at about 3300
B.C.
, Peru about the time of Christ, and Mesoamerica about
A.D.
100. It is virtually certain that in the Old World pristine states also arose in Egypt (about 3100
B.C.
), in the Indus Valley (shortly before 2000
B.C.
), and in the Yellow River Basin of northern China (shortly after 2000
B.C.
). There is considerable doubt, however, about the claim made by some prehistorians that pristine states also developed in Crete and the Aegean at about 2000
B.C.
and in the Lake Region of East Africa at about
A.D.
200. Controversy also surrounds the question of whether in the New World the pristine Mesoamerican state arose first in the lowland Maya region or in the Mexican highlands—a question I shall explore in the next chapter.

The rise of pristine states would appear to be best understood as a consequence of the intensification of agricultural production. Like hunter-collectors, agricultural villages tended to intensify their food production efforts in order to relieve reproductive pressures. Unlike hunter-collectors however, agriculturalists in favored soil zones can intensify their efforts for a relatively long time without suffering sharp depletions and efficiency losses. Sedentary village agriculturalists therefore tend to develop special institutions which encourage intensification by conspicuously rewarding those who work harder than others. A key part of the process by which the state’s structure of subordination developed involves the distinctive nature of the institutions responsible for rewarding production-intensifiers in sedentary pre-state agricultural villages.

Anthropologists refer to the intensifiers of agricultural
production as “big men.” In their purest, most egalitarian phase, known best from studies of numerous groups in Melanesia and New Guinea, “big men” play the role of hard-working, ambitious, public-spirited individuals who inveigle their relatives and neighbors to work for them by promising to hold a huge feast with the extra food they produce. When the feast takes place, the “big man,” surrounded by his proud helpers, ostentatiously redistributes—parcels out—piles of food and other gifts but keeps nothing for himself. Under certain ecological conditions, and in the presence of warfare, these food managers could have gradually set themselves above their followers and become the original nucleus of the ruling classes of the first states.

Harvard University anthropologist Douglas Oliver carried out a classic study of “bigmanship” during his field work among the Siuai on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. Among the Siuai a “big man” is called a
mumi
and to achieve
mumi
status is every youth’s highest ambition. A young man proves himself capable of becoming a
mumi
by working harder than everyone else and by carefully restricting his own consumption of meat and coconuts. Eventually, he impresses his wife, children and near relatives with the seriousness of his intentions, and they vow to help him prepare for his first feast. If the feast is a success, his circle of supporters widens and he sets to work readying an even greater display of generosity. He aims next at the construction of a men’s clubhouse in which his male followers can lounge about and in which guests can be entertained and fed. Another feast is held at the consecration of the clubhouse, and if this is also a success his circle of supporters—people willing to work for the feast to come—grows still larger and he will begin to be
spoken of as a
mumi
. What do his supporters get from all this? Even though larger and larger feasts mean that the
mumi
’s demands on his supporters become more irksome, the overall volume of production goes up. So if they occasionally grumble about how hard they have to work, the followers nevertheless remain loyal as long as their
mumi
continues to maintain or increase his renown as a “great provider.”

Finally the time comes for the new
mumi
to challenge the others who have risen before him. This is done at a
muminai
feast, where a tally is kept of all the pigs, coconut pies, and sago-almond puddings given away by the host
mumi
and his followers to the guest
mumi
and his followers. If the guest
mumi
cannot reciprocate in a year or so with a feast at least as lavish as that of his challengers, he suffers great social humiliation and his fall from “
mumi
hood” is immediate. In deciding on whom to challenge, a
mumi
must be very careful. He tries to choose a guest whose downfall will increase his own reputation but he must avoid one whose capacity to retaliate exceeds his own.

At the end of a successful feast, the greatest of
mumis
still faces a lifetime of personal toil and dependency on the moods and inclinations of his followers. “
Mumi
hood”—at least, as Oliver observed it—does not confer the power to coerce others into doing one’s bidding, nor does it elevate one’s standard of living above anyone else’s. In fact, since giving things away is the lifeblood of “
mumi
hood,” great
mumis
may even consume less meat and other delicacies than an ordinary, undistinguished Siuai. Among the Kaoka, another Solomon Island group reported on by H. Ian Hogbin, there is the saying: “The giver of the feast takes the bones and the stale cakes; the meat and the fat go to the others.”

Moreover, a
mumi
cannot rest on his laurels but must constantly prepare for new challenges. At a great feast attended by 1,100 people on January 10, 1939, the host
mumi
, whose name was Soni, gave away thirty-two pigs plus a large quantity of sago-almond puddings. Soni and his closest followers, however, went hungry. “We shall eat Soni’s renown,” the followers said. That night, exhausted from weeks of feverish preparations, they talked about the rest they had earned now that the feast was over. But early the next morning they were awakened by the booming sound of wooden gongs being beaten in Soni’s clubhouse. A handful of sleepy people straggled over to see who was making all the noise. It was Soni, and this is what he told them: