Original accumulation processes in Sumerian society

The development of authority and hierarchy, even before the establishment of a class society, represents one of the most important turning points in history; a point that laid the foundation for patriarchal power. The institutionalization of patriarchy as a system to define and organize society and people would eventually transform into state power.

A discussion about the origin of capitalism has to start from and focus on the concept of original accumulation – a concept referred to by Marx in the first volume of The Capital as the phase preceding capitalist accumulation, described as “not the result, but the starting point of the capitalist mode of production. ” (1) This framework not only tries to identify the specific historical events and period that preceded capitalism and that could, therefore, better explain its origins, but it also aims to bring greater clarity to the process and the conditions that led to the establishment of capitalist relations. The concept of original accumulation is, in fact, associated to a specific historical process that helps to better understand the structural conditions necessary for the existence of capitalist society, which preserve the “past as something that survives in the present. ” (2)

It was materialist and Foucauldian feminists, like Silvia Federici, that helped to unpack and analyze the arcane nature of this process. (3) Her genealogical work on the transition to capitalism, for example, showed how it emerged as a response of feudal lords, merchant aristocracy, bishops, and popes to the harsh social conflict that, between 1350 and 1500, was shaking their power. (4)It was a true counterrevolution and not the result of an evolutionary process capable of giving shape to the economic forces that had matured within the old system: the development of capitalism, framed as a response to the crisis of feudal power, was not the only process that could have led to a different economic system, meaning that it was not inevitable or conditional to those specific historic events: during that time, in fact,Europe great social movements and rebels were envisioning and proposing new egalitarian and cooperative society.

The strategy deployed by these socio-economic and religious elites was to co-opt young male workers in struggle through an unequal sexual policy that transformed class struggle into antagonism toward women, thus facilitating the introduction of a new sexual division of labor and the erosion (or erosion) of women’s social status The witch hunt represented the culmination of the violence of this process.

It was thus possible to establish, between the 16th and the 17th centuries, a centralized state that at the same time could control every aspect of reproduction, dispossess European workers of their livelihoods and subjugate indigenous American and African populations to create and enslaved labor-force in the mines and plantations. But, as Federici explicitly points out, “the original accumulation was […] not simply an accumulation and concentration of labor-power and capital. It was also an accumulation of differences and divisions in the working class, so that hierarchies based on gender, as well as ‘race’ and age, became a constitutive element of class domination and the formation of the modern proletariat.” (5) It thus emerges how the process of original accumulation became, first and foremost, a strategy of governance, in order to control, discipline and repress the rebellious social body, (6) which, especially through a gender-based hierarchical division, produces the conditions for a more agile extraction of value from society and allows the church and the state to turn people’s skills and potential into labor-power to be appropriated.

This archaeology of the transition to capitalism must be placed within the framework of Öcalan’s philosophy in order to understand this process in its logical, historical, material and ideological roots: the origin of the social divisions on which original accumulation is based must be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia, to the historical phase (or moment) that led to the institutionalization of hierarchy. Original accumulation thus begins with the change of mentality that came with the development of agriculture. It was women who played a key role in developing a sedentary form of society in which they managed and defined culture, knowledge, relations with the environment and community reproduction. The change of mindset from this natural society occurred when the “strong man”, the hunter, who was able to impose himself by force despite his marginal and unreliable role in society, allied himself with the group of elders, who had no role in the community, to develop a form of society designed to systematically oppress and marginalize women, for example by educating and training young men in violent combat and killing: hence authority and hierarchy developed. (7)

The development of authority and hierarchy, even before the establishment of a class society, represents one of the most important turning points in history; a point that laid the foundation for patriarchal power. The institutionalization of patriarchy as a system to define and organize society and people would eventually transform into state power.(8)
This means that, historically, male authority emerged in a radically communitarian society, centered around principles of redistribution and against any form of accumulation, seen as deeply contrary to morality and religion. (9) Patriarchal society initially expressed forms of hierarchical organization that were useful and efficient. As Öcalan points out, in fact,”before domination was part of human relations the exploitation of force [by man] could not be developed and employed. Instead, domination has to do with possession […]. The condition of possession is the core of all property systems. A new era had begun in which communities, women, children and youth, as well as territories for hunting and gathering, were all considered property […]. Meanwhile, the shaman was busy devising the mythology of this new era. It was up to him to make this novelty appear as a magnificent progress in front of the minds of the dominated men”. (10)In fact, if authoritarian forces weren’t so effective in constructing narratives and systems that legitimize their systemic power over people, social groups would break free of this condition of subjugation and liberate themselves much more easily . Therefore, starting in the late Neolithic period, as it was the case during the 16th–17th centuries, the power of the state has been affirming its control over society through the systemic and large-scale use of violence and deception, through a real counterrevolution against the natural society’s resistance to the emergence of authority. (11)

So, the institutionalization of hierarchy, which takes formal shape in the way the state is organized and in its very own existence, is articulated by a systematic patriarchal subordination and by the process of proprietary centralization; phenomena that, as I have pointed out here, are intrinsic and fundamental elements of the original accumulation enabling the transition to capitalism. This is why we can clearly argue that capitalism cannot be considered exclusively as an economic system , but as a form of governance by “possessive, exploitative, colonial, and assimilationist powers” (12): as a monopoly of power and capital.

This new system fully grew and established itself in the Late Uruk culture (4th–3rd millennium BCE) in Lower Mesopotamia. In particular, as Federici highlights, “the plantation system was decisive for the development of capitalism not only because of the immense surplus of labor-power it accumulated, but because it outlined patterns of labor organization, production for export, economic integration and international division of labor-power that have become paradigmatic of capitalist class relations.” (13) In Uruk and southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium B.C., a similar process occurred, brought about by the introduction of a new way to organize agricultural production: a long field system with furrow irrigation, which, thanks to the necessary technical innovations, made primitive accumulation possible for the first city-state in history. (14) Such agricultural technology required the presence of a central coordinating agency for planting and management unlike the basin irrigation system that could be managed independently at the family or village level. The urban revolution stimulated by this agricultural innovation, therefore, already implied the existence of a form of authority capable of coordinating and planning the division of land through new colonization campaigns of fairly large areas: the material and ideological institution that became the focal point e of this centralized management system was the temple.

The significant growth and expansion in agricultural production that this technological evolution brought within a few centuries was not, in fact, geared towards improving the population’s livelihoods; instead it led to a structural transformation of social relations whereby the drainage of the surplus produced by communities was enabled by the exploitation of labor (corvée) by the temple agency. An agency that monopolized the right to distribute the products stored in the temple, from which services to the community were provided. This was a largely unbalanced double-circle redistributive system, since significant flows of goods went from the outer circle (the workers and laborers) to the central storehouse (temple), and from the temple to the inner circle of employees (administrators and governors). (15) Thus, the temple was the institution that managed the infrastructural and logistical aspects of this transformation, made possible by a strong ideological legitimacy, which led to the temple being chosen among other possible central agencies. In fact, , the governance regime proposed by the temple had to take care of the need to ideologically compensate the social costs of the urban revolution: “taking resources away from producers […] and channeling them to social uses requires a strong dose of coercion that can be physical […] or rather ideological. And the temple was the only institution capable of convincing producers to surrender substantial portions of their labor for the benefit of the community and its leaders, under the species of their divine hypostases. ” (16)

In regard to the ideological element inherent in primitive accumulation, in the wake of Wallerstein’s studies on the “world-system”, (17) Algaze illustrates the structural connection between the mechanisms of proprietary centralization used by the temple and the colonial practices endogenous and endemic to the centralism of the early city-states. (18) Indeed, in order to legitimize these new hierarchies it was necessary to produce a clearly defined symbolic system of authority and strategically expand the territories under the influence of the early city-states to procure large quantities of metal, wood, and stone to enrich the new monumental public buildings. Although in that period the relationship of economic exploitation of the center over the periphery did not concern primary consumer goods, which were managed independently by indigenous peoples, it was still severely affecting communities’ ways of life, who were forced, for example, to adopt extractive economies on their territories for the sole benefit of the southern cities, as it was the case for the northern mountain cantons located in mining areas. Such exploitation had repercussions not only on the economy, but also on the ways in which society was organized: in societies from peripheral territories, who organized without following the state model, there was an increase of hierarchical empowerment in the form of the chiefdom: a figure who was identified and supported by Uruk’s merchants and its governors, who collaborated with indigenous elites to establish production systems that were useful and functional for the southern urban economy. (19) Local power groups elites, by assimilating the lifestyle of southern Mesopotamian communities, thus became interpreters of this vast system of domination.

In conclusion, the materialist and genealogical feminist perspective provided further arguments for understanding why Öcalan traces the origins of capitalism to the Sumerian society: since it is not exclusively an economic system, but a mode of governmentality, it must be understood that it was the transformations that occurred in Mesopotamia along the fourth millennium BCE. B.C. and stabilized according to the traits of the Late-Uruk culture that brought forth those material and ideological phenomena, which persist even today, as a past that survives in the present, in the processes of original accumulation, namely the increase in violence against women, the expropriation of common property and colonialism.