0199 In order to lay out their theory of state, Graeber and Wengrow recall their three foundational expressions of freedom: (1) the freedom to move, (2) the freedom to disobey orders and (3) the freedom to organize (and adjust) social relations.

The authors ask (more or less), “Can we speak similarly about elementary forms of domination?”

0200 Recall the equilibrium exchange between freedom and property rights.  The concept of property rights seems to be the inverse of the concept of freedom, as seen in the following figure, which appears earlier in the commentary.

0201 The fact that these two are located in the category of firstness, the realm of possibility, means that they are a monad.  They are like two faces in one photo.  I do not think that I can name the foundational monad, but it must be as sacramental as a marriage.  Two faces are in one photo because they are married.  What God has joined, let no man tear apart.

0202 This union becomes more palpable when I ask, “How can property rights be violated?”

Well, the answer is the same as the question, “How can freedom be violated?”

The obvious answer is through force.  I can steal your property.  I can stop you from leaving.  I can force you into a social configuration.

The next obvious answer is through the mitigation of one’s ability to make a claim.  I can control your property through fraud and misrepresentation.  I can force obedience by denying your freedom to disobey commands.  I can change the meaning of the word, “ownership”.

The least obvious answer is through charisma.  I can seduce you into slavery.  I can destroy order through mob action.  I can demand your admiration.

0203 Who am I?

“I” am the state.  Did someone else say that?  Louis XIV of France?

Yes, “my” three principles are sovereignty (the control of violence), bureaucracy (the administration of information) and charisma (the appropriation of honor).  

0204 According to Graeber and Wengrow, each of these principles has served as a basis for state formation.  Access to violence, information and charisma define the very possibility of social domination.  The modern nation state is configured as a combination of sovereignty, bureaucracy and competitive politics.  Each elementary form of dominationhas its own historical origins.

0205 When historians speculate about the origin of states for ancient Mesopotamia, India, China and Peru, they project these three principles backwards, in time and location.  They presume that each path culminates in a state_2b, emerging from the potential of order_1b.  “Order_1b” is confounded with policing power, administration and competitive politics.

0206 Or, should I say, that “order_1b” is confounded with domination₂, according to the following definition.

0207 Graeber and Wengrow explore the concept that a state could arise from one or two of the potentials₁ underlying the term, “domination”₂ in the normal context of defintion₃.

0208 Well, the Olmec and the Maya may have started with competitive politics.  They play “ball games” where the “ball” is a human skull (or something like that).  No wonder everyone wanted to follow the winner.

0209 What about the early large-scale societies that appear in the Peruvian Andes and adjacent coastal drainages, long before the Inca?

Monumental architecture appears in the Rio Supe region between 3000 and 2500 B.C.  Then, between 1000 to 200 B.C., a single center, Chavin de Huantar, is founded in the northern highlands of Peru.

To me, this suggests exposure to speech-alone talk before 3000 B.C., with full adoption by say, 2800 B.C.  I wonder, “Could some speech-alone talking person have made it to the coast of Peru two thousand years before the official start of the Lapita horizon in the eastern Pacific, around 1600 B.C.?”  

Hmmm, the establishment of large settlements in China’s Shandong province, on the lower reaches of the Yellow River, date to no later than 3500 B.C.

0210 Graeber and Wengrow dwell on the Chavin horizon.  Its art appears across a wide region.  Some of the pottery figures are monsters.  Do the monsters have a purpose?  Perhaps, they offer visual clues for remembering complicated mythologies, such as genealogies or shamanic journeys.  Some carved figures hold plants known for their hallucinogenic properties.  Can a “state” come together on the administration of psychoactive substances?  I suppose so.  What about today’s psychoactive propaganda?  Do our televisions offer the same appeal as the representatives of the Chavin horizon? Come experience the illusion.  Watch and enter the delusion.

0211 Graeber and Wengrow label the early civilizations of the Americas, “first order regimes”, because they seem to be organized around only one of the three elementary forms of domination.

0212 This implies that the term, “state”_2b, directly emerges from and situates the potential of “domination”_1b.  Plus, the potential of the term, “domination” arises from three independent sources, which look increasingly like meaning (exclusive control of violence), presence (various ministries trafficking in information) and message (honor our heroic deeds).

0213 Here is a picture.

0214 Can there be sovereignty without the state?

0215 Graeber and Wengrow turn their attention back to North America.

A French Jesuit, Father Maturin Le Petit, gives an account of the Natchez in the early 1800s.  He draws parallels to the reign of King Louis XIV, the self-fashioned “Sun King”.  The story that the missionary tells is both strange and familiar.

Like the Sun King, the Natchez ruler has total authority.  Unlike the Sun King, the Natchez ruler cannot delegate his power.  If any Natchez “citizen” does not live close to the Great Village, then there is no reason to obey the one who embodies the total authority of the state.

0216 What does this imply?

Sovereign power_3b is a normal context₃, not an actuality₂ or or a potential₁.  The Natchez ruler_2b is sovereign_3b, but only for those within the Great Village at any moment in time_1b.  The sovereign_3b stands above all other institutions_3a, because sovereign power_3b arises from the potential of one type of righteousness_1a: order_1b.  On one hand, order_1b is not the same as violence, knowledge or charisma.  On the other hand, it_1b may be.

 0217 Graeber and Wengrow go over examples of apparent anomalies, where the normal context of sovereign power_3b is operational, yet the actuality_2b does not meet the definition of a state₂, emerging from the potentials of exclusive control over force₁, knowledge₁ and charisma₁.  Besides the Natchez, the authors mention the Suillah, along the White Nile, as well as the Chavin and Olmec, already mentioned.

0218 Then, the authors turn their attention to one apparently reliable indicator of state formation: mass killings at royal burials.  Such mass killings are familiar to students of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and China.

For example, mass killing marks the beginning of Egypt’s first dynasty, starting in 3100 B.C.

Yet, sovereignty is clearly evident during the predynastic periods, starting around 4000 B.C.  Modern archaeologists speculate about the material conditions behind the transition.  However, these matter-oriented speculations distract from the main point of Graeber and Wengrow’s insights in layers A:A’ and B:B’. What goes on in people’s minds matters.

0219 What is going on in people’s minds at these mass killings?

Well, let me speculate.  The king is dead and I serve the king so, let me get in line to serve the king on his journey to the source.

Or, let’s get rid of these throwbacks to a bygone era.

0220 Clearly, the state_2b, as the actuality of sovereign power_3b, differentiates from all other organizational objectives_2aand institutions_3a.  Yet, the state_2b remains like an organizational objective_2a in regards to three principles₁ that may be endowed with righteousness_1a (control of violence₁, adminstration₁ and charismatic status₁).

0221 Of course, these principles associate to domination_2a, but so does the word, “outlaw”.  The state_2b is like an outlaw_2b that works for the good of its institutions.  In contrast, the outlaw_2b, is defined solely by self-interest.

Here is a picture of the definition of the term “outlaw”_2b, as opposed to the “state”_2b.

Just something to think about.

0222 Starting around 3500 B.C., during the proto-dynastic period of Egypt, petty monarchs are afforded fine burials all along the Nile Valley.  These petty kings give every indication of maintaining military and administrative control in their respective territories.  Graeber and Wengrow ask (more or less), “How do we get from these monarchs to the massive agrarian bureaucracy of First Dynastic Egypt?”

0223 Could it be about death?

The authors imagine debates about the responsibilities of the living to the dead.

Here is an institutional diagram for each little kingdom along the Nile.

0224 The dyadic actuality_2a consists in two contiguous real elements, the living (people) and the dead (ruler).  The contiguity is placed in brackets.  The brackets contain a modern term, “responsibility”.

However, I must keep in mind that the term, “responsibility”, is an explicit abstraction.  The ancient substance in the brackets is not an explicit abstraction.  The ancient substance arises in various questions.  Does the dead hunger?  Does the dead thirst?  The answer is apparent.  Grave goods include bread and pots of fermented wheat beer.

0225 Two innovations, one agricultural and one ceremonial, reinforce one another.  Agricultural improvements include ploughs and oxen, introduced around 3000 B.C.  Ceremonial innovations include networks of obligations and debts, centered around the provisioning of the dead.  Facilities dedicated to baking and brewing appear, first, alongside cemeteries, then later, near palaces and grand tombs.  By the start of the First Dynastic (around 2500 B.C.), bread and beer are manufactured on an industrial scale, enough to supply seasonal armies of corvee laborers working on royal constructions.

0226 The transition from proto-dynastic to First Dynastic differentiates the above institution into the Egyptian state_2bCand the people’s “religious” obligation to the afterlife_2aC.  The conundrum about the local ruler_3aC blossoms into separate social levels for the Pharoah_3bC and the people_3aC.  Order_1bC arises from righteousness_1aC.

0227 Needless to say, the Pharaoh’s order_1b does not reduce to the actuality of the term, “domination”_2a.

0228 Why does each early ancient civilization exhibit a unique historical trajectory?

Mesopotamia differs from the Mayan lowlands.

China differs from the Olmec, Chavin and Natchez.

The Inca empire differs from ancient Egypt.

0229 Yet, there are commonalities, which Graeber and Wengrow attribute to the three elementary forms of domination.  Each ancient civilization passes through its own sequences of first-order, second-order and third-order regimes.

The Olmec, Chavin and Natchez develop first-order regimes, displaying primarily one elementary form of domination.

Egypt’s predynastic rulers develop two: sovereignty and administration.  Mesopotamian kings start with administration and heroic status.  Classic Maya elevates sovereignty and competitive politics.

Eventually, each civilizational state manifests all three elementary forms of domination.

0230 However, unbeknownst to Graeber and Wengrow, there is another definition that arises from a historical differentiation of category-based nested forms due to the explicit abstraction afforded by speech-alone talk.  Society₃, organization₂ and individual in community₁ are the first to differentiate after the first singularity.  The differentiation continues until situation-level sovereign power_3b differentiates from content-level institutions_3a in the society_C tier.

0231 Here is a picture comparing the two situation-level category based nested forms.

0232 The first nested form is from the chapter on presence in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion”.

The second nested form is from chapter ten in David Graeber and David Wengrow’s masterwork, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.

0233 From this comparison, I conclude that Graeber and Wengrow’s definition of the “state”_2b coincides with sovereign acts and decrees_2b.  The potential for order_1b parallels the possibility of domination_1b.   The potentials underlying the term, “domination”_1a by extension, associates to the possibilities inherent in righteousness_1a.  Or even worse, the potentials underlying the term, “domination”_1a, defines righteousness_1a.

0234 What does it mean for sovereign power_3b to be confounded with a situation-level definition_3b of the spoken term, “state”_2b?

0235 A pair of two-level interscopes stand before me.

The first corresponds to the first two levels of the society_C tier.

The second corresponds to the situation-level definition of the term, “state”, derived from Graeber and Wengrow’s theory, plus a content-level definition of the term, “domination”.

0236 Normal contexts₃ exhibit the logics of exclusion, complement or alignment.

Once again, I ask, “Do the situation-level normal contexts exclude one another, complement one another, or align with one another?”

The first option is sovereign action without the state.  Or, is it a state without sovereign acts?

I suspect that this option describes the conditions where situation-level sovereign power_3b has not differentiated from other institutions_3a.  Every institution_3a exercises disciplinary power, which is similar to sovereign action without the state.  Every institution enforces its disciplinary powers, which are similar to domination.

The second option may correspond to the first and second-order regimes illustrated by Graeber and Wengrow.

The third option is the civilizational state (you know, like the one that the indigenous people of the Eastern Woodlands of North America criticize before their utter ruin).

0237 It makes me wonder whether the fashionable terms of “liberty, equality and fraternity”, used by the so-called “left”, in favor of state intervention for every social organization, might be a form of righteousness_1a that manifests as the potentials_1a underlying the term, domination”_2a.

0238 Consider the Ubaid period of southern Mesopotamia, ranging from 5800 to 4000 B.C.

The administration of information seems to be devoted to mitigating social domination as an unintended consequence of labor specialization.  Some Ubaid labor specializations are more rewarding than others.  So, a sovereign bureaucracy strives to prevent the more affluent from lording over the less affluent.  Was this bureaucracy itself a form of domination?  Well, yes, it dominated in order to mitigate… um… domination due to spontaneous social inequality.

0239 Indeed, the history of coincidences between order_1b and controlling coercion_1a, administering information_1a and championing charismatic power_1a, is mixed, suggesting that the state_2b has no origin.

Instead, the term, “state”_2b, stands as a sign of contradiction to the term, “outlaw”_2b.  The “domination”_2a that supports the “state”_2b is precisely opposed to the “domination”_2a that supports the “outlaw”_2b.

It is no wonder that, over time, Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Chinese rulers proclaim themselves to be protectors of the weak, feeders of the hungry, and solace for widows and orphans.

What better way to distinguish the “domination”_2a underlying the “state”_2b from the one_2a underlying the “outlaw”_2b?

0240 What goes unseen in this discussion?

The meaning, presence and message_1a underlying the term, “domination”_2a, does not coincide with the potential of the content-level of the society tier: righteousness_1a.

0241 Yes, a strange contradiction can no longer hide.

0242 Why does the state_2b have no origin?

On one hand, the word, “state”_2b occurs in a situation-level definition_3b, supplemented by a content-level definition_3a that informs the situation-level potential_1b.  Consequently, academics debate what the potential_1b underlying the state_2b must be.  What is content-level actuality_2a?  It depends on the anthropologist.

On the other hand, sovereign power_3b virtually emerges from (and situates) institutions_3a.  Sovereign power_3b does not “originate”, sovereign power_3b differentiates from institutions_3a.  

Modern academics confound the term, “state”_2b, with the situation-level actuality of sovereign acts and decrees_2b.  This explains why social scientists are certain that there is a (content-level) causality involved in state formation and that they can figure out its definition.  In contrast, Graeber and Wengrow insist that historical contingency and what people think are relevant and cannot be theoretically defined.

0243 Oh, the confounding is so easy to do.  Here is a modified picture of the first two levels of the society_C tier.

0244 Shall I conclude that the “state”_2b should directly emerge from (and situate) the potential of ‘order’_1bC in the normal context of sovereign power_3bC?

Shall I surmise that the situation-level potential for ‘order’_1bC virtually emerges from (and situates) the content-level potentials of ‘controlling violence, administrating information and selecting who is charismatic and who is not’_1a?

0245 Graeber and Wengrow offer a pragmatic identification of the term, “state”_2b, as a correlate to a definition of the term, “domination”_2a.  In the normal context of anthropology_3a, the spoken word, “domination”_2a, directly emerges from (and situates) the potentials of exerting violence_1a, directing information_1a and manifesting charismatic influence_1a.  Thus, the “state”_2b, coincides with sovereign acts and decrees_2bC, when the potential for ‘order’_1bC meshes with potentials that define ‘domination’_1b.

0246 In short, in Graeber and Wengrow’s theory, the state_2b is an apparatus for domination_2a, by definition.

The problem?

Oh, I already noted the problem.  The situation-level potential for ‘order’_1bC virtually emerges from (and situates) the content-level potential of ‘righteousness’_1aC.

The state_2b has no origin because domination_1b is not founded in righteousness_1aC.

Unless, of course, the inquirer believes the propaganda of the day.

Recognize the possibility.