Economic Revolutions
This planet upon which we live has been around for about five billion years, according to geologists and the best guessers. We actually don't know.
However, what we are concerned with here is not the geological age of the earth, but the age of the earth as it relates to man,
Man and How Man Has Put the Pieces Together in Order to Survive and to Survive in Increasing
Comfort and Prosperity.
So far as human life is concerned, it appears that man has been on this earth for a million
years or more.
Actually, relatively few years ago, a consensus was reached among a number of anthropologists
to the effect that human life began here about one million years ago.
But since then, new discoveries, primarily made in Africa by Professor Leakey and Professor
Dart, have tended to shake our faith in that one million year figure, and it has now been
extended backwards in time until many scholars are contending that man has been on this old
Earth of ours for closer to 2 million rather than 1 million years. Be that as it may, human beings
have been around for a fairly long time. And the characteristic that we have, that differentiates
us from other species, is our ability to organize and in essence to take over the earth. Man is
is without question the dominant species in this world. And so it becomes important for
us to examine that and to see how we got the way we got and what way we are going into
the future. To begin with, if we were to use this one million year scale and simply say
that man has been around for at least a million years, and then we can give or take whatever
In the world of human behavior, however in excess there may have been, we would have to take note of the fact that in man's earliest experience on this planet, he lived in a state of savagery. I'm using the term in a general way. Incidentally, the word as I will use it does not intend to infer ferocity. By a savage, I simply mean a primitive man, a man living under very primitive conditions. And if we examine human behavior,
and Human Organization over this past million years, to the extent of our ability to examine it.
And of course, in some instances, we have far more lack of information than we have information.
But to the best of our ability, putting the pieces together, it appears that in general,
human beings lived in a state of savagery for about 990,000 of the last one million years.
Of course, though that long period of time, for purposes of understanding and study, is
subdivided into various shorter periods of time. Usually anthropologists break it down
according to the kind of tools that were in use, and we hear of paleolithic man, mesolithic,
Neolithic and so on relating to the type of tool that they evolved. This is not a discussion
of savagery. I simply want to get into the record that we lived, human beings lived in
a state of savagery, employing only primitive tools, primarily made of stone or wood, and
that we managed to survive with a gradually ascending scale of livelihood for about 990,000
years without anything in the way of a remarkable change. Then, about 10,000 years ago, came
the first economic revolution. What happened was this. So long as men lived in a state
of Savagery, they tended to organize in hunting and foraging societies. They accepted as their
leaders the best hunter or the best forager, often the strongest man or the man with the
greatest endurance, and then others would band around him as he would endeavor to lead
them successfully on the hunt or in search for the various things that they would require
in order to get enough to eat and to stay alive amidst the vicissitudes of a faltering
climate and the hazards of wild animals and exposure and so on.
So during a great period of time of this last one million years in which human beings have
been around, men lived in a kind of tribal communism in which property was shared and
Men Shared Alike, in which the general view was a collective one, and people organized
around the kind of leader that could assist them in having that type of economy.
I might point out that it is somewhere in the Savage Period that religions are first
developed. Men, because they have brains and are able to use their minds, began to conjecture
about things that they didn't know anything about. And it is in the area of speculation,
what happens after we are dead, or what happens before we are born, that causes men to begin to
structure and devise religious or theological theory of one sort or another. And of course,
these early religions that were formed back in very primitive times were collectivist in nature.
Here, they invariably contained a pantheon of deity, that is to say there would be a
multiplicity of gods and goddesses. To begin with, they would be probably animistic in
character with various totems and fetishes depicting either certain qualities of strength,
courage, endurance, etc., or actually depicting animal forms, because this was the nature
of the World that Men Lived in, and they tended to deify those things that they were familiar
with in one sense, but those things that in addition to being familiar with, they were,
they seemed superlative, and so they tended to create a whole pantheon of deity comprised
of animistic and totemistic forms.
When came the first economic revolution? It began about 10,000 years ago, approximately,
wherein men discovered finally that they would have a better chance of survival if they were
to begin planting crops. The hunt is always a process fraught with much risk and the great
Chance of Failure. You don't succeed well in a hunt unless there is a plentiful supply
of game and, further, a kind of game that you can master, track down, and overcome.
And thus, when men were operating in a hunting-foraging type of economy, the numbers of men alive
at any one time—of course, we don't know, no census was taken back as early as this—but
The conjecture is that only a relatively few thousand, possibly half a million people would
have been alive at any one time on the whole face of the earth. Then we had this economic
revolution where we discovered that by planting crops and by domesticating animals and putting
them out to pasture but riding herd on them and taking care of them, we could have a much
Much more reliable food supply. And that, of course, was always the basic problem. In
all of the history of man, our basic problem has been to get enough to eat. Starvation
has probably killed more people than all of the wars that we have ever had, and even probably
more than our present traffic. So, starvation has been a problem from the beginning. And
And once we learned how to cultivate fields and put in crops, then of course our entire
outlook changed and we reorganized society in a different way. This introduced the next
epoch of human experience, which we will call barbarism. Barbarism is a step above savagery.
We are now becoming more complicated, more sophisticated. And note that this is always
is an important factor whenever an agrarian type economy emerges.
What is important is that we stop being migratory types of persons who wander around following
the game. We have to settle down. It doesn't do us a bit of good, you see, to put in a
crop and then walk off and leave it. We have to stay there and take care of it and certainly
be around in time for the harvest. Otherwise, there was no point in putting it in in the
in the first place. So as we began our agrarian revolution, the holding of land became important.
Land became an asset and we sought to own it and control it. And to do this, men created
governments. Many persons have supposed that government is actually an instrument that
emerges in savage times. That is not true. Actually, government is a barbaric invention
and not a savage invention. It was developed by men who recognized the primacy of holding land.
And of course, governments were devised originally to take land away from other men
who were holding it, and thus to add to the number of acres or the number of square miles
that you could annex to your own holdings, whatever they were. So along with government,
The military arm was created simultaneously. In fact, the government and the military have always
gone hand in hand. It is virtually impossible to imagine a government without a military or,
in point of fact, a military that does not have at least a rudimentary government to make it function.
So government and the military came together. Curiously, they both evolved out of the theocratic
route, because in the earlier times when men were organized around religious concepts,
the way was paved for deifying first animals and then men. And we have a period of time
in which the kind of gods that men worship are essentially heroes who have died but who
who are remembered for their exploits and who become in time such revered figures that
they essentially provide figures of worship. And so it was a natural thing as governments
were evolved to evolve political leaders who it was presumed had some special deification
or they couldn't have been chosen as leaders. And so there is a logical extension of the
a theocratic route into the political structure as men turned away from religion per se, not that they ever really turned away from it, I'm not suggesting that,
instead they turned away from a pantheistic, paganistic type of religion with a pantheon of deity that is essentially primitive and communistic toward a new type of deity that is embodied in the trappings of the state.
And, of course, it is a matter of common knowledge, I think, that many of your early governments
tended to deify their principal leaders, the Romans being well known in this regard, where
a number of the Caesars were presumed to become gods when they died, and we even have the
interesting record that when Nero's horse died, he had that deified, so you can have
all kinds of animistic types of deity continuing right on down for any number of years.
The age of barbarism then began about 10,000 years ago and it is characterized by the emergence
of a new type of economy centering around the development of mass-produced foodstuffs
rather than foodstuffs that have to be tracked down and the development of holding the land,
The emergence of the military mechanism and the government mechanism and a kind of refinement
in the religious area as major religions become more and more individualistic. At first they
are collectivistic in concept, then they become more and more singular as people think more
and more in this area.
Now, about 2500 years ago, usually it is said about the time that the city-states were being
developed in Greece, we have a shift in thinking and there are any number of scholars who tend
to date the birth of civilization with that time. In other words, going back to about
About 500 B.C., or approximately 2500 years ago, it is claimed by many that we had a new
development and the civilized period began. Actually, I have to differ with that view.
I do not think that we have yet learned to be civilized. I believe the period that we
are in is still at least a semi-barbaric period. I think most of us are still barbarians. I
I think we act like it. I think that although we may have developed a technology that is civilized,
well, I don't think there's any question of that. Insofar as our sociology is concerned,
we remain virtually ignorant of the nature of man and virtually unprepared to deal with other men,
accepting by barbaric means. And this, of course, is characteristic of the barbarians,
who from the beginning when they first emerged about 10,000 years ago up to the present have
believed that force is the ultimate tool in dealing with others of their kind and hence they always
tend to organize along forceful lines. Government becomes the most essential tool that they have
because in the end they lack any real confidence in their ability to deal with other people
unless they have a war club in one hand. And so we have tended during the last 10,000 years
to concentrate on government and to turn more and more chores and responsibilities over to the state
with the state's ultimate weapon, total force, backing these decisions and these policies that
that are set forth.
Now beginning about 200 years ago, the second major economic revolution occurred. This is
the Industrial Revolution. And we haven't yet resolved what it means. Beginning in England
around 1760 and continuing up to the present time, gradually around the earth, industrialization
has taken over. We are still in the age of industrial revolution and industrial development.
Currently, it is taking on new overtones as we get into not only mechanization of various
jobs, but the automation of various jobs, where we have tools that make the tools and
even now managerial tools that manage the tools that are capable of making the tools.
And so we have a retreat in depth into the tool area, so that more and more we are counting
upon tools to do our work for us and, in terms of modern computers, we are even asking the
tools to do our mathematical sums for us and ultimately even to make decisions for us and
to do some of our thinking for us.
So this is the current shift.
It is all part of the Industrial Revolution and it is moving in that area. How far it
will go is a matter of conjecture. We don't know. But beginning in 1760, this very recent
change began. It's the second major economic development. However, with this development,
We are right on the threshold of a great sociological breakthrough.
And what I'm hoping for is that we can now develop our knowledge sociologically and anthropologically
in sufficient depth so that we can throw off our barbaric trappings and actually culminate
the Industrial Revolution in a birth of civilization, per se.
Now I realize that my use of the term civilized here and the connotations I apply to it are
unorthodox and they don't really pertain if you look up the word civilization in a dictionary.
I know what it means. Of course, a civilized man is essentially a man who lives in a city.
He has been citified. That is to say, he has attained to a type of urban life which causes
was him not to himself carry his own war club, but rather he depends upon a kind of collectivizing
of force so that he can individualize his other pursuits. And this has been the character
of barbaric development, I would say gradually, over the past 10,000 years up to and including
in the present time. But we are on the fringe of a major development. What we are beginning
to discover is that government, as we understand it, is becoming a tool that is so archaic
and obsolete that in point of fact we can't afford it anymore. It has become no longer
are a tool that we can use. It is a tool that is using us. It is dominating our lives, directing
our industry, subordinating our mentalities, and essentially pushing us into the status
of obedient, docile, and indeed industrious animals. And this is something that the nature
of Man is going to rebel against. Indeed, we can already sense this feeling of rebellion
and revolution. It is in the air. Things are happening because men no longer want to operate
that way. That is a great many of them do not. Now, unfortunately, many of today's rebels,
Many of today's youth in particular, who call themselves revolutionists, have not sorted
out the pieces properly. And so they tend to look at the marketplace and the operation
of an economy as their enemy. They turn thumbs down on what they call commercialism and all
of its crass implications, and they view government as the essential tool, and thus they actually
actually seek power so that they can take over and impose their will on other people.
Actually that tendency to seek for power is nothing but the evidence of barbarism.
This is characteristic of all barbarians and the many of the new youthful movements, and
I'm sorry to have to say this because I know that many of them have wonderful hearts and
and Wonderful Intentions. Nonetheless, they are engaged in a rebirth of barbarism in the
things that they do, which is unfortunate. What they're really getting at, I think, and
what if we can provide the proper direction and guidance, will be a passing across the
or threshold into what will be, in fact, the new economic system, which is one that, although
we've been leaning this way gradually, could only be properly called, when it comes into
full bloom, a laissez-faire economy, one that does not depend on the government at all.
Now to imagine this type of culture, one has to put aside a lot of notions that he may
may have held for a long time. In fact, I remember that when it was first suggested
to me that possibly, just possibly, human beings could get along without having the
government to referee and to make decisions for them, I personally experienced a sense
of nausea, as if I had been struck a sudden blow in the stomach or something. I could
would hardly endure the thought of anything as revolutionary as that sounds. And yet,
on the basis of the evidence that we now have, it appears certain that we are either going
to move in that direction and learn how to live at peace with our fellows on a sound
economic base, and that we must have, one that is predicated upon private property and
and the private management of the assets that individuals have, or we are going to turn
the corner and head back again into barbarism full tilt. And that we can do too. Just what
we will do, I don't know. There is no way that I can predict on the basis of what has
happened before what is going to happen in the future. I can only examine the record
that we have up to this time and see what the indications are and then hope and pray
that we make intelligent decisions so that we can move in the right direction rather
than the wrong one.
We are living in the latter part of the 20th century in the most crucial age that human
beings have ever lived in. How it will emerge, how we will emerge from it, I frankly do
do not know, but the factors are there for a gigantic breakthrough that will make it
possible for us to put aside war and government and coercion as the ultimate decision-makers
for us and instead move into what Tom Paine called the age of reason and realize that
Amicable understanding predicated upon private ownership of property and respect for one
another's persons, one another's lives, is the cornerstone on which true civilization,
if it is to come, must rest.
To understand what is involved here, I would like to point out the prerequisites of government,
because that is the age we are still dealing with. We are still dealing with barbarism.
In fact, I like to call the particular age that we're in an age of post-barbarism,
because intellectually we are not barbarians. Intellectually, we have evolved far enough
so that we recognize, we know, we understand the nature of the physical world we live in.
There is hardly a technical problem which, given the time and the resources to work with,
We could not resolve. We have put men in orbit around this planet, in outer space. We have
sent them to the moon. In theory, we can send them to other planets in this solar system,
and doubtless it could be done if there were a reason to do it. There is hardly a problem
that we could not resolve technologically. And yet, when it comes to our working together,
we are still at a primitive level, using war clubs and ultimate force as a means of making
Decision. Now that's a very dangerous condition to be in. If you have to deal with barbarians,
it would be much better if the best weapon they had was a war club. When you're dealing
with barbarians who are emotionally barbarous, but who are intellectually sophisticated,
who have atomic weapons at their disposal, you are dealing with a condition that is fraught
with Peril, not just for those who in the immediate vicinity of the weaponry, but anybody
on the planet is now confronted with the absolute possibility that our emotionalism, our failure
to understand the nature of man, the nature of the market and the nature of government
may convert this earth into a nova and our entire solar system will erupt in one grand
and Atomic Explosion. It could happen. And that would be the end of the whole bit. So
whether we like it or not, we are going to have to use our minds to develop better mechanisms
for dealing with one another than mechanisms that rely totally upon force. This is, I think,
the challenge of our age. The great third economic and social revolution is at hand.
If we can get through it properly, we will for the first time have civilization, a kind
of human arrangement that depends upon reason, upon exchanges voluntarily made, that will
depend upon understanding, education, knowledge, rather than upon force, politics, barbarism,
violence, war, etc.
The choice is going to be up to every person now alive. This is a decision that you and
I can make. None of us is big enough to have caused all the problems that exist, and none
of us is big enough to solve all of them. The best you and I can be is a part of the
problem or a part of the solution. The choice will ultimately be up to you.