>My objection is actually twofold. One, I deny that the state has a single
>purpose (to screw the lower classes). Two, I deny that the state has a
>single origin (the origin of class society). Things are much more
>complicated than that. I would hypothesize
that the most likely origin of
>the state (that is, a system of administration) is the beginning of
>societies that are too big and too complicated, and too dependent on the
>correct working together of their various parts, to not require
>specialization and routinization of functions.
^^^^ CB: Your hypothesis is _less_ complicated than Engels' thesis on the origin of the state in _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_. Notice from the title alone you can see his thesis argues that the state originates as part of a _complex_ ( not simplex) involving the male supremicist family, and private property. Your idea is simpler than that, because you don't mention the change in the form of the family.
Engels' book length (in contrast with your one paragraph) argument ,if simplified, would be more like " the state's essential purpose is to guarantee that exploiting classes get the surplus production of the classes they exploit."
Furthermore, the Engels/Marx thesis on the origin of the state as part of the origin of economic classes _is_ an argument concerning specialization of economic function. Their argument includes your notion of management function. Classes originate as a specializaton and antagonism between predominantly mental and predominantly physical labor. With the origin of agriculture and domesticaton of animals, it became possible to produce surpluses of food and necessities. Surplus production is the producers producing more than their own necessities.
This made it possible for a section of society to "specialize" in "thinking" to oversee, organize, manage, and do ancient agronomy, and not having to do the physical labor of food production. These "priests" could live off of the surpluses that the predominantly physical laborers produced, and spend all their time doing the mental functions that no doubt enhanced and improved production relative to the ancient modes of production. Engels and Marx also hypothesize that the origin of the anatagonism between the city (civilization) and the country is coincident with the above, increasing the complexity of their argument relative to yours.
Notice the term "surplus" is the same as used in Marx's "surplus value" exploited today in capitalism, but of course, the original surpluses were of a different form than in capitalism. The various modes of production down through history are basically different surplus producing systems. And the exploiting classes are defined by the ways they exploit the surpluses.
The origin of agricultural and domesticated animal surpluses was a "good" thing , "rainy day funds" so to speak, to get society through bad seasons that were disasters in the original hunting and gathering , hand to mouth/no surplus producing societies of yore. The good thing went a bit bad when exploiting classes originated. ( NB: primitive life was not , in the main , nasty, brutish and short. The disasters would have been relatively rare or else we would have gone extinct.( See _Stone Age Economics_ by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins for the "famous" major evidence and argumentation on the "original affluent society")
Archaeologists place the origin of the state in Mesopotamia. Archaeology places the origins of agriculture and animal husbandry which is coincident in the relative historical sense, with the origin of the state. It was in Mesopotamia , too. This coincidence supports Engels' thesis.
In this post you seem to acknowledge that the state _has_ an origin that is not coincident with the origin of human society. That isn't the way you talked earlier on this thread and the related one. Empirically based modern anthropology and archaeology holds that human society has existed for at least 200,000 years and that the state originated about 6 -7,000 years ago. That means that the vast majority of time of human society did not have state based societies. The archaeological evidence is also that private property , i.e. exploiting and exploited classes did not exist before the same time that the state originated.
^^^^^
If you have a large
>territory and need regular shipments of food from one side to the other,
>you need somebody to make sure this gets done at the right time in the
>right quantities to the right places.
^^^^^ CB: Yes, the exploiting classes originate in a management, overseeing, and perhaps an agronomist knowledge function. But the societies before the origin of private property and the state didn't "have" large "territory". Before the origin of the state , there wasn't territory, as Lewis Henry Morgan argued in _Ancient Society_. _Societas_ or ancient society organized itself on the basis of kinship. Only with _civitas_ or civilization or the origin of the state do societies have _territory_.
For 200,000 years humans didn't starve into extinction, and there was no problem of "distributing" the food to avoid that. People ate hand to mouth, not producing or storing surpluses, so there was no issue of distributing ( except to babies) . Everybody works, forages. "Distribution" problems arise when not everybody works to produce the food. Those who depend on surplus production must guarantee that _they_ get the surplus production of others. At a certain point, they rely on coercion , _the state_, standing bodies of armed men, to coerce the producers to "share" the surplus with them. That's the historical point of the fall from the Garden of Eden (smile; maybe)
You need people to guard that route
>along which the shipments are being transported.
^^^^^ CB: You don't have stealing in primitive communist systems that prevailed for 200,000 years. It is only with the origin of private property that there is the origin of stealing , and the need to guard the private property surpluses. No private property no stealing, no guarding.
^^^^^
You need people to equip
>and train the guards with the right amount of equipment and the right
>training and determine the number of guards
> needed. This equipment has to be produced in the right quantity. Etc.
> The origin of the state is pure logistical necessity.
>
>You do not need a state to have a class society, BTW.
^^^^^ CB: Exactly wrong. Without the state, the exploiting class couldn't exploit surpluses from the exploited class. The origin of the state is a pure "logistical "necessity for the existence of private property.
So, now you admit that the state did not originate at the origin of human society when you acknowledge there weren't large "territories".