El origen mafioso del Estado

29/4/12

Leía esta mañana This Fleeting World, una historia general de la humanidad de David Christian, en el capítulo que trata del desarrollo de las primeras ciudades en la Era Agraria. Tras la revolución neolítica, entre el 8.000 y el 3.000 antes de Cristo se desarrollaron en el Viejo Mundo las primeras grandes aglomeraciones, más allá de las aldeas características de la época neolítica primera. Junto con las grandes ciudades (grandes relativamente, no comparadas con las de ahora, claro) surgen manifestaciones como la arquitectura monumental, templos, pirámides y palacios que van unidos al desarrollo de estructuras de poder político elaboradas. También en las ciudades se especializa la división del trabajo en artesanos y especialistas diversos, partiendo de las tradicionales profesiones de agricultores, ganaderos, comerciantes, constructores, soldados y sacerdotes. Cabría mencionar la escritura como un desarrollo especializado que va asociado a la contabilidad de excedentes y la tabulación masiva de ingresos y de tráfico de mercancías. La ciudad, el Estado y la escritura surgen asociados unos a otros. Y el Estado lo define Christian como una fuerza coercitiva para imponer la ley y extraer impuestos, dos funciones asociadas, puesto que los impuestos son la ley y a la vez son necesarios para mantener la ley, igual que la ley es necesaria para que los impuestos sean tales impuestos y no un mero saqueo. El Estado es quien detenta el monopolio de la violencia, y es por tanto una institución fundamentalmente coercitiva.

Hace alguna alusión Christian a al asociación entre los primeros Estados y la extorsión organizada—es decir, entre los bandoleros y los recaudadores de impuestos, o entre los reyes y los jefes de bandidos—pero señala que el origen de los primeros Estados es oscuro y que no hay muchos datos al respecto. 

Sí hay sin embargo teorías, en esta línea relacionando el origen la violencia legal del Estado con la violencia desorganizada de parásitos y bandoleros. El Estado sería una fuerza surgida para impedir el saqueo de los bienes comunes o de los bienes frágiles acumulados, como las cosechas—pero surgiría no como mera asociación de propietarios interesados, sino a modo de mafia: sería el bandolero más poderoso el que impone su ley y el que "protege" a su territorio de los demás bandoleros, pastoreándolo y manteniendo el monopolio de la recaudación de impuestos a la vez que asegura un cierto dominio de la ley y el orden.

Una teoría muy atractiva al respecto la exponía Vico en la Ciencia Nueva, que hace surgir al Estado como desarrollo del clientelismo—de la protección que una aristocracia patriarcal da a sus dependientes y allegados. Un comentario puse a este respecto en Pompilos, una web que trata esta cuestión:

Sobre el origen mafioso de las culturas que señalas al final del plan general, hay un pasaje en Vico (Ciencia Nueva, II.5.5) que ofrece un paralelismo interesante, después de interpretar el minotauro como una nave de corsario:

“Refiriéndose a estas cosas, Plutarco dice en el Teseo que los héroes tenían a gran honor y lo consideraban mérito de armas el ser llamados ‘ladrones’, al igual que en los tiempos bárbaros retornados el título de ‘corsario’ era título de señoría. En aquiellos tiempos, llegado ya Solón, se dice que permitió con sus leyes las sociedades por razón de botín.”

Vico explica el origen de las clases sociales en el “asilo” o “protección” que daban los nobles a los plebeyos – a los que sin embargo continuaban considerando sus enemigos.

En Pompilos, José María Ciordia plantea una tesis muy interesante en esta línea, el origen mafioso de los estados, con el interés de que relaciona geografía, comunicaciones y estructuras de poder. El nexo común es el transporte fluvial o marítimo. Es una tesis que parece muy válida para varias de las primeras culturas del Viejo Mundo—aunque en América las civilizaciones azteca, inca, maya y pueblo parecen necesitar otra explicación, como la que se sugiere sobre pasos y puertos de montaña.

Cito aquí la última sección de su introducción al libro sobre "el origen naval de las culturas" (entendiendo por ello las culturas avanzadas con ciudades y estados).

8. The naval (and mafioso) origin of the cultures

Greek culture, like the Roman and Phoenician cultures, was a naval culture because
Greece lived facing the sea, but can we apply the same explanatory model to other ancient
cultures? On the other hand, Greek architecture and sculpture are well explained by means
of the naval hypothesis, but it is also undeniable that they are also heavily indebted to their
Mycenaean precedents, as well as to the architecture and sculpture of contemporaneous
Egypt and Orient. Then, did the Greeks adopt foreign elements and give them a absolutely
new meaning, a naval meaning? Or did these elements already have their naval meaning in
their original cultures, Mycenaean, Egyptian and Oriental? A brief analysis of some features
of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures shows that the naval hypothesis has to be much
more productive than might be thought at first. To put only an example, the so called Asiatic
model of production can be the product of a mistake: the primitive kings had to be
transporters of merchandises that they did not own, and the archives were not the account
of a redistribution, but the account of merchandises received and delivered, in the absence of
monetary mediation. The overturned and stored boat was used as a warehouse for
merchandises and, as the seat of the captain, it was also converted into a palace and a
temple.

The new approach to Antiquity proposed here argues for the elaboration of a naval
model of evolution of ancient civilizations. The origin of the prosperity of the societies is the
trade with surplus production, which allows specialization and increasing productivity, but
the surplus is only produced when there exist expectations to trade with it. It is obvious that
trade attracts thieves. In an open territory thef is difficult, because is difficult to find the
traders and these have many alternative routes; however theft is easy when traders have to
pass a gorge. Great rivers encouraged commerce but, at the same time, the enormous
differential yield existing between aquatic and terrestrial transport made the course of rivers
like the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates great gorges to commercial effects.

The complete success of theft entails its end, because trade disappears. However, a
partial success of thieving is sustainable, but as a disadvantage it attracts other thieves,
which brings about again the undesirable result of the disappearance of trade. At this
moment the required conditions for the appearance of the state arise. One of the thieves
offers himself to escort the traders who have to pass the gorge in exchange for a payment, in
order to avoid being assaulted by the other thieves. On the basis of this transaction we find
many principles of the state.

The porta (Latin word for “gate”) is the gorge through which the traders have to pass:
the course of a river mainly, but also a seaport, a mountain port, a gated bridge or the gate of
a market or a city, which are the places where traditionally taxes on the traffic of
merchandises have been taken. The tax consists on a proportional substraction on the
transported merchandise; it is still a form of sustainable thef, but it goes along with the
guarantee that there will be a unique, proportional and previously known payment. The
protection of the merchandises and the traders against other thieves means the legitimation
for the collection of the tax. Simultaneously it constitutes a declaration of war to the other
thieves, and transforms the protecting thief in a warrior king: if he becomes victorious, he
holds the monopoly of violence, and that is what assures peace and the security to the
commerce. The territory of the state is a territory safe for the commerce, that reaches where
the protection of the king reaches; it is a territory free of thieves or, what is the same thing,
with only one reasonable and foreseeable thief. The place where the porta is situated
becomes the capital of the territory: usually the section of the river in which the blockade is
exerted, a fluvial port in which the traders are forced to stop and that becomes thus a market
place.

In short, it is not by chance that the ancient kings show themselves cleaning the routes
of monsters and bandits, the way Heracles does in his twelve works. The state is an
institution that is born from commerce, lives on it, and simultaneously creates the conditions
for its growth.

The kingʹs success in the war against other thieves, and the growth of the territory
covered by his authority, has a contradictory effect. At the center of the territory, far from the
frontiers where the insecurity can still be noticeable, the kingʹs legitimacy dissapears and
thus the continuity of the collection of the taxes is endangered. In order to avoid this source
of problems the king develops several strategies for legitimation. Religion is one of them,
since by means of it he projects over the subjets an idealized image of social order;
nationalism is another one. Among the activities that create an alternative legitimacy, an
outstanding one consist in providing additional services to the trade: the construction of
public works (improvement of the ways, construction of wharves, walling markets…), and
the juridic protection of the trade (standardization of weights and measures, vigilance of the
market, commercial laws…).

All commercial transaction is an attempt of theft from one party to the other, in which,
if there is a difference of power between the parties, the balance inclines to the more
powerful one. The successive repetition of unequal interchanges can lead to the reduction of
the number of commercial transactions, a circumstance which damages the interests of the
king who indeed bases his prosperity on the continuity of the transactions. As an extension
of the protection against the thieves of the routes, the king will protect his subjects against
the thieves of the market, repairing the injustices committed by the powerful ones.
Nevertheless, since his power needs the help of the powerful ones, he will reserve these
exemplar correctives to the powerful people which would try to supplant him or refuse to
collaborate with him. Finally we found united here four of the functions that habitually
define royalty: war, religion, public works and justice.

The cities located in the course of the great rivers with greater possibility for becoming
capitals were those located at the middle course, because most of the traffic passed at this
point, but when trade expanded out of the river to the sea routes, the capital moved to the
mouth, the new porta. This is the process that leads from Abidos, located on the center of the
course of the Nile, to the later capitals located on its mouth, Memphis, Thebes and
Alexandria.

The first civilizations of the Old World were developed on the great rivers: Old Europe
in the Danube, Egypt on the Nile, Mesopotamia at the union of the Tigris and the Euphrates,
Mohenjo Daro on the Indus, China on the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. The conquest of a sea
was more difficult, but Rome achieved it when it conquered the central gorge of the
Mediterranean: southern Italy, Sicily and Carthage. Possibly it is not by chance that
civilization started where four seas join, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea
and the Indian Ocean, and that this has been one of the most disputed places on Earth.
Through the rivers flowing to these four seas, Southern Europe, North and Eastern Africa
and southern Asia could trade. Aferwards the Islamic culture flourished when it made this
enclave the center of an intercontinental commerce, and its decline began indeed when the
Portuguese people circumnavigated Africa and Spain incorporated America to the worldwide
commerce, creating new commercial routes in the Atlantic and the Pacific. Really, we
have to study political history, until the arrival of the railway and aviation, not as a matter of
owning the earth, but of dominating the rivers and the seas.

Bien convincente, como se ve. Puede leerse algo más al respecto, en relación a Mesopotamia, en el libro de Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power, aunque parece minimizar el papel de la violencia, la coerción y el conflicto.

Ahora, lo del origen mafioso del Estado es sólo la primera parte de la cuestión. Habría que desarrollar la cuestión en esta línea atendiendo a la continuada naturaleza intrínsecamente mafiosa de los Estados, élites gobernantes, partidos políticos, etc., apoyándose en análisis políticos como el marxismo, la Teoría de la clase ociosa de Veblen o (más cerca de casa) reportajes sobre corrupción política como La telaraña andaluza. Tampoco es que quiera colocar al PSOE andaluz en la tradición de los grandes constructores de civilizaciones. Pero en fin, mezcladas con las instituciones democráticas que actúan muchas veces como pantalla o escaparate, están las redes de intereses, clientelismos, contactos, intercambios de favores, sinecuras para los socios, etc., que corren como una constante a través de la historia. El fondo común lo administra el Estado para el bien común, pero siempre favoreciendo al que parte y reparte, y a las élites que allí lo han colocado; y así se atiende debidamente a la naturaleza perennemente mafiosa del Estado como gran famiglia . Para matices y detalles esta cuestión tendrá que esperar a otro día, evidentemente—that's too long for a post.

En tiempos de los cíclopes