Such efforts faced drastic limitations. The most formidable was the
narrow margin of surplus produced by hand labor in the forests, on the
fields and in the workshops, operated, in the main, with hand tools,
with minor inputs of energy supplied by domestic animals and with the
small amounts derived from wind and moving water.
Two further limitations existed. First, as each civilization matured its
leaders and policy makers ceased to labor on the land or in the
workshops, preferring to keep their hands and clothes clean, to free
themselves from irksome demanding toil and devote themselves to tasks
more befitting "gentlefolk." This was notably true of landlords as a
class. It was also true of the richer traders, merchants and
moneylenders, particularly of the third and fourth generations.
Expansion of empires and the civilizations which they developed entailed
military operations. Military operations, in their turn, produced
war-captives, who must earn their keep and, if possible, something more.
Sold in the market to the highest bidder, war captives and their
descendants became chattel slaves. As civilizations were expanded by
conquest and matured by struggle, they developed some type of forced
labor to balance the increased parasitism of the masters and the
growing numbers who were called upon to produce "services" rather than
material goods.
Certain areas of civilized economies were taken over by the public
authorities.
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