Preventing Revolution

The first section indicated that the exploited will tend to react against exploitation. Thus, the next major problem is to keep the productive sector from rebelling, that is to keep the sector acquiescent while a portion of the surplus was being taken, or, failing that, to put down revolt. Preventing revolution was at bottom the task of the military. Peasant rebellions, a frequent occurrence in history, illustrate both the discontent of the productive sector and the use of force in repressing it. One Chinese expert says that there were peasant rebellions almost every year in China, while a Russian expert says that in the period between 1801 and 1861 there were no less than 1,467peasant risings in various parts of the Russian empire [Lenski, 1966,p. 274]. That even more did not take place may be explained in part by referring to the saying of Aristotle, "If you strike at a King, you had better kill him," with its implicit threat of the dire consequences of failure.

Secondly, those concerned with the values of society made a contribution. The most important group historically has been religious functionaries. The major function of religion,, from the point of view of an exploitative society, was to soften the hostility of the productive sector, thereby reducing the costs of control. It did this in various ways‑by legitimizing the ruling class more or less wholeheartedly (the divine right of kings versus "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, unto God the things that are God's) limiting rebellion and assassination by direct edict ("thou shalt not kill") or by a promise of otherworldly rewards or by justifying (as in Buddhism) or glorifying humble status ("he that humbles himself shall be exalted").

Other features of society helped to keep the productive sector from rebelling.

The productive sector has not in general been unified, which would increase its power. In part, this is due to the general conditions of existence of those in the productive sector, the majority of whom, in typical societies, have been peasants. As Marx said about the French peasant:

        Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is increased by France's bad means of communication and by the poverty of the peasants....In this way, the great mass of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes [1962, p.334].

Moreover, divisions exist in the productive sector as the result of past history. In Bolivia, for example, the two major subjugated Indian cultures were the Aymara and the Quechua, who had traditional antagonisms. Divisions have also been aggravated by design of the ruling class, for divide and rule is as important a precept as divide and conquer. Thus the British in India, for example, established separate electoral roles for Muslims and Hindus. Panikkar says, "By this expedient, the Muslims became a separate political entity, perpetually at odds with the Hindus and judging all issues from the point of view of a religious community [1969, p. 120].

In addition the internal structure of exploitation has been such that most live above the very lowest group in society, Marx's lumpenproletariat and Lenski's expendibles. The presence in the society of these expendables served as a warning to the others, making them more cautious.

In general, in both the exploitative and productive sectors, there has been a gradation of income and status levels which meant a channeling of efforts to rising within the system rather than struggling to overthrow it, as small steps were within the compass and aspiration of those in the system. Moreover, such a process tends to get potential leaders of rebellion into the exploitative sector and into positions where they can rather use their talents to suppress.

The traditional aspect of these societies has been noted by many observers, in contrast to the ostensibly more rational rules and attitudes of more developed societies. However, tradition is functional in these societies from the point of view of those who rule, whose opinion is what matters, even if it means loss of output. Tradition--doing what has always been done--serves the important function of keeping people in their parents' places, thereby reducing control costs.

The passage of time also served to blur injustice. Mark Twain on the subject is worth quoting:

    What a funny thing is monarchy....It assumes that a wrong maintained for a dozen or a thousand years becomes a right. It assumes that the wronged parties will presently give up and take the same view....Now by an effort one can imagine a family of bears taking pride in the historic fact that an ancestor of theirs took violent possession of a bee tree some centuries ago, and that the family have had a right to it ever since....but there the allegory fails; for the bees would attack the bears every day for a thousand years. You can make a man understand how time turns wrong into a right, but you can't make a bee understand--in his present under-developed stage.

Moreover the exploitative system was aided by taking advantage of certain aspects of human psychology.

The first of these is displacement. Hostility is likely to be generated in the productive class by the operation of the exploitative system. Expression of this hostility would prove dangerous both to members of the productive class, since the exploiting class would take measures to suppress it, and to the exploiting class, since the expression of hostility might lead to rebellion. Such hostility is commonly displaced on foreigners, or groups in the society perceived to be different. This scapegoating, according to the case, may have the further benefit of strengthening the ruling class position with respect to foreign interference or reducing the solidarity of the productive class.

Secondly the exploiting class in their dealings with the productive class has often benefited by imitating the parent-child relationship. When the relations between key actors in the exploitative system--be they lords and peasants, a hacendado and his workers or a president and his people--resemble those of father and child, the association, both conscious and unconscious, will tend to call forth patterns of behavior and emotional associations mimicking the original relationship. There can be no doubt that the worker's situation was strikingly similar to that of a child. He depended on this master for access to employment, his means of sustenance and survival. He was punished for infractions of the rules and rewarded for obedience. The master, by means of dress, behavior and education, often contrived to appear a person far above the worker, as a father must appear to a child. The result was that the worker's pattern of behavior toward the master tended to duplicate that learned as a child, of which the most important characteristics from the point of view of control in the exploitative system were obedience, acceptance of inferiority, love of the master and identification with him and his interests. Thus the exploitative system was "economical" in that its control costs were lowered.

Economists in their model of people posit a person who adjusts his purchases and hours worked in accordance with his tastes so as to maximize his satisfaction. Such a view may be useful for the narrow range of questions that economists have been considering. For our purposes it is far more important to realize that peoples' mentality is determined by the rewards and sanctions that the economic system provides. In the United States, for example, there are organization men and consumers, people whose personalities have been adjusted to the outlets that the system provides. As a simplification of this point, we may consider that throughout history man adjusted his personality within a rather large range to obtain the main good--survival. In the circumstances provided by an exploitative system, people may enslave themselves.

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