Topic: 7. AN "AGREEMENT" BETWEEN PRINCIPALS AND THE THIRD PARTY?
Father-right preceeded mother-right in the evolution of culture. What caused father-right to decline was nothing in the technics of male hunting, I am saying, but in the complex agreements male hunters had among themselves. Males left arbitration of their disputes to women, who rose in prominance as mediators. Thus male culture passed beyond itself into female culture. This will be my basic position. We still have to discuss, too, more evolved culture, such as slavery, feudalism, capitalism and so forth. My view will be that each transition is caused by a rise and then failure of the agreement appropriate to a given age. This failure is the result in each case of the fact that no agreement provides for settlement of disagreement, which must pass for settlement to an impartial party. In the case of hunters, men passed their otherwise unresolvable disagreements to women to settle; these women became their leaders. In horticulture, later, these same kinds of disagreements were passed to outsiders and foreigners, even to enemies, ad infinitum.
Two hunters (say) in an agreement do not constitute, by themselves, a "society." Society as we are thinking of the word here is triadal, between parties to an agreement and, on the other hand, the (previously discussed) third party. At issue now is the contract, which in effect is an "agreement about an agreement." We may think of the third party as "government." Simply the fact that there is an agreement does not necessarily imply that society and government are present. Society does not exist through agreements alone; society exists insofar as agreements are added to remedy the impotence of other agreements. Society in essence is, regardless of how society is distorted or perverted, the third party to a contract. No multitude of humans is required for there to be a full society, rather only a few, so long as the triadal relationship is present. There need be only two persons as principals, plus a third person as "government." Society as we presently understand the term, in its multitude of human members and its infinitely complex structures, is only an extrapolation from the primary and primal relationship between three persons. I have suggested this point earlier, in my section Philosophical Anthropology. Paleolithic hunters could have society; but they would need a chief, albeit simply the third member of a hunting party, who would arbitrate disagreements between the other two hunters. There is nothing more complex than this to the issue of what constitutes society. Where, even in preliterate culture, there is a contract there is society. A contract is present when two hunters (say) admit, or agree as part of their agreement, that they may disagree; and they cede all force to the third man among them, which man then constitutes "government." This triadal relation between principals and third party, even where there are only three parties to the relationship, is all that is meant by society.
What the relationship is--one which suspends all force--between principals in an agreement we have already discussed. We should be clear on this point. Where we still lack clear understanding is in the relationship between principals as a group and, on the other hand, the third party. The principals have a contract when as part of their agreement they allow that disputes among them be settled--by force if necessary--by a third party. I suggest that to understand even in very basic terms the relation between principals and third party is to complete our vision of society. We will know not only the static structure of society but the dynamic structure of society. Every agreement negates itself, essentially, by contractually allowing force through a third party. The contract requires a second agreement on top of the first one; this is an agreement, namely, between principals and a third party. This is only one more agreement. In other words, the (first) principals do not have, yet, a contract with the third party, only a simple agreement that allows the third party to use force to settle disagreements between the (first) principals. Every agreement that raises the possibility of dis-agreement among principals passes, as contract, into a new agreement between principals and third party. The agreement with the third party is that the third party will use force to settle disagreements among principals. But this agreement between principals and third party is, qua mere agreeement, has no provision in the event (really eventuality) of a dis-agreement. It is obvious that if these principals disagree with the arbitor of disagreements, there is no force available to them which would settle this disagreement. The agreement between principals and third party, in order to be enforced in its provisions, would itself have to be subject to a third agreement. Every agreement passes by virtue of its impotence in disagreements into another agreement ad infinitum. In these terms we see that society itself, as a series of agreements and disagreements always requiring arbitration, is engaged in a self-contradiction. Society in effect negates itself. There is more. Without its ongoing effort to restore its inbalance, by addressing the impotence of agreements by inventing new agreements, society would pass out of existence. Society is always threatening passing out of existence, to be replaced by a State of Nature. This conclusion is inescapable. We are left with the conclusion, unavoidably, that American democracy is simply agreement piled upon agreement, contract upon contract. This--the accumulation of agreements and contracts--is all there is to "enlightened" society. Dictatorship, in these terms, and raw slavery, have the advantage not that they are advanced--when advancement is simply muliplication of the same--but that they are simple and straightforward.
We owe a great debt to Friedrich Engels, first in suggesting an application of Hegelian dialectic to the issue of society; secondly in raising the possibility that identifiable social and cultural entities--feudalism, capitalism etc.-- of society could be explained in their succession by the Hegelian formula. In my Philtalk blog I talked extensively about Engels. Some of the minor points of this blog, which I forget, may finally some day surface if, as was suggested by one Philtalk member (see "The Story of My Life" on this blog), the contents thereof are ever released by Philtalk's moderator Uwe. I wait for this to happen. In the meantime I want to suggest the possibility that, contrary to current ideas, the stages of society--hunting, agriculture, feudalism and so forth--may be simply phases whereupon agreements pass into contracts and again into further agreements. This will be the angle I am working with for the next period of time. We understand, for instance, how the agreement between two or three hunters of a hunting party is simply that, an agreement, but is not a contract. The reason for this is simple. The hunting party is so small it cannot effectively bifurcate into an arrangement between principals and leader/mediator. As will be seen however, the fact that the agreement is impotent to enforce provisions in agreements leads, or tends to lead, to the dissolution of the hunting party. That is, if provisions of the agreement cannot be enforced, a breech of the agreement would lead to the agreement's dissolution. We can be confident that that would happen. In these terms it would not be surprising if a hunting party did dissolve itself simply on account of its lack of authority.
The common wisdom, promoted by university and marxist scholars, is that the superiority of agriculture over hunting would itself be sufficient to cause human beings to change from one to the other. The reasons for change would be technological. I would prefer to say that the reasons for the change from hunting to agriculture were "legal." Males could not solve, in other words, the purely legal problems--the formal relations among themselves--in the complex technical and human context of hunting. I will go on to speak of the failure of agreements in "male culture" and the rise of women as mediators--and leaders--in these agreements. Women's culture and the Mutterrecht supplanted the father-right. The entire human culture and way of life came to be biased, with this new leadership, toward female interests and abilities.
Last edited by richard_swartzbaugh (2009-08-08 15:55:49)