>From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_bigfoot.com>
>Donald Oddy:
>>You can't repress someone who has the ability to leave, they may choose
>>not too because the alternative is worse than staying.
>In which case, they are still repressed in the normal meaning
>of the word. Implying for example that the trollkin of Ignorance
>aren't repressed because they have the ability to leave seems to
>me to be redefining the meaning of repression for ideological
>grounds (FWIW many repressed people in modern states did have some
>ability to leave).
Then almost everyone is repressed by the circumstances of their lives, the need to earn a living preventing a free choice of activity. Part of the problem is that the term is used politically about regimes of which the speaker disapproves rather than in any objective sense.
>>Equally slavery isn't the worst that can happen, an employee who is
>>paid less than it costs to live is worse off than a slave whose owner
>>is obliged to feed, clothe and house him.
>No full-time employee can be paid less than it costs to live off
>for too long.
Depends on what you mean by too long, eventually the labour surplus which allows that to happen will disappear. Either through starvation, population movements or increased demand. Unless there are other factors such as state benefits or women's jobs paying pin money when married women were supported by their husbands.
>>While it is possible to compare a society
>>with modern western society and make a value judgement about their
>>respective merits you need to be aware that viewed from the different
>>cultural perspective the opposite conclusion could equally be drawn.
>And this alters the perception that some people of society X is
>repressed in what way?
It doesn't alter your perception, however the people of society X may equally well regard you as repressed by the society you live in.
>From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_bigfoot.com>
>Donald Oddy:
>>Of course if you were a woman you would have no rights at all, simply
>>your father's property until you were married when you became your
>>husband's. So that's a 50% chance of being worse off under Roman law.
>You really have to distinguish between what the law said and the
>social practice. Roman law governed the relationship between
>households while within those households, they had enormous
>influence as to what was said or done. As Cato once complained
>"All men rule over women, we Romans rule over all men, our wives
>rule over us". And he spoke before Livia, Aggripina, Messalina,
>etc.
Well the discussion is about legal rights rather than social practice, and the legal position of women was far worse under Roman than Brehon law. However laws generally reflect social practice although only belatedly reflecting changes therein so in spite of the traditional complaint of married men it is reasonable to assume that any influence a wife had over her husband was dependant on how much he allowed her.
>>The big plus of Celtic society was that the leader was local, he
>>could be appealed to, influenced and even disposed of by the people
>>he ruled.
>This was also the case in many roman-ruled communities. For
>example, the proportion of Judean Prefects removed from office
>as a result of an appeal by his subjects is quite large (so much
>so that it's been alleged that the romans sent deliberate
>incompetents there).
Quite different, all that means is the real ruler would eventually take notice of the incompetance of his appointees if the local people made enough fuss.
>>Not only is Caesar a biased source and would not have understood the
>>society he was criticising
>He is biased but I don't think that you can claim that as a result
>his social picture of the Gauls is incorrect. It doesn't take too
>much brains to notice that a farmer is downtrodden.
It's pretty obvious from the writings attributed to him that he had little contact with ordinary Gauls and his dealings with their leaders show a little understanding of the social structure.
>>but I'm very suspicious of a translation which uses the word "knights".
>The actual word he would have used "equestrian" (an important social
>rank in Rome that was based on those who served in the Roman cavalry)
>is usually translated as "knights". All it means is that the Celtic
>nobility fought on horseback.
That's precisely what I mean, not only do we have Caesar applying a term with a precise meaning to something only vaguely similar but Latin scholars following a medieval tradition of translating the result as "knights". How may other similar inaccurate translations are there? which aren't so easy to spot. It doesn't take much of that sort of thing to turn any agricultural society into a feudal one.
>>The celtic and norse practice of slavery was a lot less repressive
>>than medieval serfdom and that less repressive than 19th Century
>>absentee landlords and factory wage labour.
>Nobody has any way of knowing this. It can be argued that in
>a status-proud society, like the norse or the celts, that the
>plight of a humble thrall is worse than that of a medieval
>villien. Once again, one should distinguish between the law
>and practice.
There's no way of knowing for sure, but the relatively small proportion of slaves and the fact that they shared accomodation with their masters indicates that they were individually known to their masters. The worst abuses have always been inflicted on groups of people who were not individually known to their abusers. Certainly there will be a wide variation in practice in individual cases but the general principle applies.
The Glorantha Digest Thursday, December 14 2000 Volume 08 : Number 176
>Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 11:41:26 0100
>From: "Gareth Martin" <gamartin_at_nortelnetworks.com>
>Subject: repression, diversions to real politics
>> You can't repress someone who has the ability to leave, they may choose
>> not too because the alternative is worse than staying. Equally slavery
>Well thats a real lawyer-ism. :) If the alternatives are those such as being
>able to wander out into the wilderness and starve to deatjh, it's not much of an
>option. And it's not as if this means that you are free - you are merely an
>escaped or delinquent thrall, and thus subject to even greater legal sanction.
>Furthermore, its unlikely that entry into another society would be any easier,
>espec ially if, as in Celtic society, they have distinct areas of executive
>authority but a common ideology of what constitutes the right and the proper. A
>thrall escaped from another tribe is often seen in much the same light as a
>domestic escaped thrall - note the laws on returning escaped slaves which
>existed in the last century.
The laws applying to escaped slaves in the 19th Century US have no relevance to Celtic society. While another tribe would be unlikely to take in an escaped slave unless they could prove kinship that's true of any stranger. Equally they would have no obligation to capture and return a slave.
>The problem with the argument "you can always leave if you don't like it" is
>that it appeals to an ideal situation which does not exist. Especially in
>low-tech societies, which run pretty close to subsitance, survival is about
>tools: for making fire, for making houses, for making war. Authority is
>functionally exercised by restrictions on access to these tools, such as the
>restrictions placed on who can own and carry weapons - usually class-based. To
>say "you can always leave" is merely to place the burden of freedom an those who
>are un-free: you imply that they voluntarily collude with their own repression,
>when in actual fact their freedoms are so limited that striking out on their own
>is not a practical proposition.
This is true of a society with a high degree of specialisation where whole sections of the population have lost the ability to live off the land which is not true of ancient celtic societies. Given the relatively sparce population of Europe at that time there would be plenty of opportunity to find somewhere remote from other people and live off the land. Not an easy life, and more vunerable to bad luck, but certainly possible.
>Whether a society is repressive or not can, I think, be determined by us, but
>only from our perspective. Whether or not the actual INHABITANTS of that
>society, both oppressed and oppressor, regard this as an iV2
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RFD:Florian_Edlbauer_at_zd.com RFD:loboj_at_airmail.net RFD:nephilim_at_doubt.mah.se RFD:gidjabol_at_hem2.passagen.se RFD:merlyn_at_ninenet.com RFD:alex.lanciani_at_flashnet.it RFD:vaktoth_at_bigfoot.com RFD:gavingossett_at_netzero.net RFD:J.M.Krijger_at_astro.uu.nl RFD:amaury.mortier_at_wanadoo.fr RFD:olivier.prudhomme_at_free.fr RFD:dmtavener_at_ev1.net RFD:wrmockett_at_gol.com RFD:Marc.Philips_at_cfmu.eurocontrol.be RFD:rjremr_at_sierratel.com RFD:David.Whitworth_at_Anglian-Windows.com RFD:uncle_wilf_at_yahoo.co.uk RFD:david_paul_castle_at_btinternet.com RFD:tloql_at_home.com RFD:fergalga_at_eui.upv.es RFD:semmensd_at_cadvision.com RFD:ledgend_at_i4free.co.nz RFD:beavis_at_chariot.net.au RFD:tommy-ni_at_algonet.se RFD:Fendhal_at_btinternet.com RFD:jan.gullvaag_at_c2i.net RFD:Christopher.Lee_at_Virgin.Net RFD:elvis_at_mindless.com RFD:epollock_at_drc.com RFD:vanghett_at_tin.it RFD:LKolkman_at_WordHouse.nl RFD:magician_at_bc1.com RFD:lars.eriksson_at_stenahe nearest equivelent would be the individual celtic tribe but even
>An interesting analogy. I would point out that significant chunks of British
>society do indeed consider themselves repressed by the USA for precisely that
>reason,
While I share the view that the US has too much influence over the British government, I would hardly call that repression. If it is, then about the only countries in the world that aren't repressed are the US and China.
>What I said about the Celtic tribes is that they have an ideological
>architecture that carries out many functions we think of as state functions,
>such as standardising default punishments for various offenses (notably
>blasphemy), establishing (and often formally investing) secular powers with
>their authority and legitimacy, and overseeing the formal relations between
>individuals (births, marriages, deaths). Although the celts do not have
>anything approaching the modern concept of the state, their society remains one
>with a remarkable degree of cultural consistency over a really, really big chunk
>of Europe. And this culural consitency frames the debate in which "freedom" is
>discussed, and how the very term is interpreted. Although Celtic society is
>certainly less INTERVENTIONIST than Roman society, it isd not IMO any more free
>merely becuase of that.
I haven't seen any evidence for a great deal of standardisation. The examples you give are matters which are the subject of laws in just about every society I can think of, usually because they are a source of disputes. Indeed the remaining sources of Brehon law show considerable differences between Welsh and Irish versions. That is after Christian monks wrote down the oral traditions of the lawspeakers they talked to and introduced some religious law (e.g. punishments for blasphemy). Given that at one time the Celtic lands stretched from Ireland to the Balkans it is highly unlikely that an oral culture without central authority would be standardised to a great extent.
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #182
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