D&D - Mediaval Social, Political & Economical Structure.

[Plane Sailing]

Vespucci has received an infraction for throwing the first stone here ("if you are going to be superficial"). Respectful debate is the desired condition folks. If anyone is unclear on what we expect they can email me, although there isn't much point in getting all defensive about it.

Thanks.

 

[pemerton]

Heck, I think Americans have trouble understanding the political and social character of Britain, and vice versa.

And both have trouble understanding the political and social character of Australia!

Taking the things you characterised as 'modernity', several are much less true of Britain than of the USA, and much less true of Germany than of Britain, and much less true of Italy than of Germany, and so on down the line.

To a significant extent this is true - America, in particular, has always been the most modern of modern societies (assuming that we accept "modernity" has some utility as a label).

I don't that your hierarchy is entirely accurate, though. It's at least arguable, for example, that in the modern period inquiry has on the whole been more highly valued in Germany than Britain.

That's how it works here in the UK

And in Australia, as far as title to land is concerned - the acquisition of terra nullius vested all title in the Crown, and all land is held by way of grant from the Crown. (Unsurprisingly, this causes a range of complexities in Australian law of native title, which has to begin from this starting point of terra nullius and yet very obviously involves a denial of it!)

The tax system assumes that the government owns all our income, but may deign to let us have some of it back.

I assume that this is exaggerated for comic effect. As I understand it, the income tax in the UK was introduced to pay for the Napoleonic Wars, therefore postdates the Bill of Rights, and therefore would simply be an obligation imposed by exercise of parliamentary authority rather than a consequence of any right inhering in the Crown. Or am I missing something?

 

[pemerton]

You know that Karl Marx, the famous historical determinist, also believed that "the choices people make influence the structure of society that develops", right?

by saying that, "Someone did X, therefore Y resulted as opposed to Z.", I'm contrasting it with the alternative, "Y results regardless" that is popular in some quarters. Marx wasn't who I had in mind, but he would be an example of a contrasting theory.

While I know that it's common to regard Marx as putting forward statements of that type "Y happens regardless", such a position is scarcely credible. If he really believed that, how can his political activity be explained? Why would he have bothered writing propaganda and building parties?

This line of thought wasn't really even on my mind in replying to you, nor for that matter was I originally thinking of debunking Marx or getting into a political debate (much less this one).

<snip>

There are a lot of things that Marx said that are are scarcely credible, but that doesn't mean he didn't say them. If Marx can be easily shown to be internally incoherent, that does not detract from my point in any way.

<snip>

My thought at the time didn't include Marx or feminism at all, and if you must know what was going on in my mind, it was more anti-Jared Diamond.

I'm always happy to join someone in being anti-Jared Diamond.

On the Marx point, though, I think there's a bit more going on than you seem to be allowing for. For example, Marx clearly does think that choices affect outcomes. But he also thinks that choices result from (what we might call) socialisation. Thus he can try and maintain his historical determinism (and hence the importance to the overall theory of the claim that the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class).

Political activity, then will not only "ease the birthpangs of history" but - perhaps as an aspect of that - help overcome ideology and develop the proletariat as a class for itself.

So I don't see Marx as internally incoherent, so much as incredibly optimistic in believing that any situation of social crisis holds within itself its own resolution, which resolution will come to be directly as a consequence of the crisis reaching its crescendo. (And in this reading of Marx I'm heavily influenced by Cohen's critique in If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?)

To draw this back to the original topic, it can be interesting to ask "what explanation, if any, can be given for the fact that actor X at historically significant time T has a preference for A over B, and is able to effectively choose in favour of A?" So, for example, when you say --

Certain areas became matriarchal monarchies because it made sense at the time and place

-- the question can be asked "why did it make sense? to whom? and why did that person have the power/capacity to realise his/her preference over the preferences of others? or, if there were no competing preferences, why not?"

Of course, there are a lot of interesting ways of tackling those questions other than via a theory of ideology. And in a fantasy world even more answers become possible, like the influence of divination magic, or the gods, on individual preferences and beliefs.

The ancient way of looking at the world is that all property belongs collectively to the government, and that the government - in the form of a sovereign - dispences rights, freedoms, and justice to his subordinates

<snip>

All property is at some level assumed to be owned by a lord and people use property at his sufferance and can be deprived of it virtually at will.

<snip>

I will claim that the above is largely feudal in its political and economic structure, or at least if you think of the high middle ages as feudal. By fuedal, I guess I should say I mean that the world is pre-modern.

What struck me in this is your easy movement between "government", "sovereign" and "lord".

In at least some published setting material for fantasy RPGs, it is that easy terminological equivalence that can sometimes cause a sense of anachronism. (And knowing nothing of your campaign world other than your two posts about it in this thread, I'm not passing judgement on it. It's just you use of words that struck me.)

It's a while since I studied Roman Law, but as I recall it, well into the principate if not the dominate the imperial administration was still regarded as forming part of the personal household of the emperor, rather than a civil service in the modern sense. And going beyond that single example, Weber puts forward as one characteristic of modernity that offices and their property and functions become divorced from the personality and personal claims and interests of the office holder.

There's also a respectable view in the history of ideas that holds that the idea of the state, in the modern sense of an abstract and impersonal system of offices and entitlements to which allegiance is owed, emerges only in the 17th century in the work of Hobbes. (Which is not to say that the political structures to which Hobbes gave a label weren't already emerging. But whereas labelling the natural world at least arguably leaves the objects of the labelling unchanged, this is often not so for the human world.)

This is part of what I had in mind when I suggested, in my earlier post upthread, that a quick-and-dirty way to get a feudal rather than modern feel is to make personal and parochical everything that in the modern world we regard as impersonal and abstract - local courts, tax collectors as private actors rather than public officials, "patriotic" duties owed to families, guilds, individual lords, etc, rather than to the nation or the community in the abstract.

There's no doubt that this is somewhat crude and simplistic, but I think it is the easiest way to convey a sense of a feudal world in a fantasy RPG.

 

[S'mon]

I assume that this is exaggerated for comic effect. As I understand it, the income tax in the UK was introduced to pay for the Napoleonic Wars, therefore postdates the Bill of Rights, and therefore would simply be an obligation imposed by exercise of parliamentary authority rather than a consequence of any right inhering in the Crown. Or am I missing something?

I'm not saying it has a strong theoretical framework, but that's how it works. This caused my American wife terrible trouble when she first came over here and got a job, as she was used to the American tax system. For a good while she was being massively overtaxed and we were at severe risk of destitution.

 

[pemerton]

S'mon, although it's somewhat OT can you say a bit more?

In Australia, for most income earners the relevant legislation imposes an obligation on the employer to remit a certain portion of that person's salary (determined via official tables issued by the Australian Tax Office) to the ATO every time they are paid (typically fortnightly). This is called PAYG (Pay as you go).

At the end of the financial year, every taxpayer has to complete a tax return where non-earned income is declared, deductions and rebates are claimed, etc - a tax statement is then issued by the ATO which either includes a demand for additional payment, or (hopefully) a cheque for the amount of excess tax collected over the course of the year.

There has been talk from time to time of introducing a system of standard deductions which would mean that those who did not have any additional income to declare, and who wished to claim only the standard deductions, would not have to lodge a return. But such a system has never been implemented.

How does it work in the UK? (Or America, for that matter?)

 

[S'mon]

We have PAYG, most people do not have to lodge a yearly return. The issue for her was that every penny she earned was being taxed at the Basic Rate + National Insurance, as she had not successfully claimed her tax-free Personal Allowance. Edit: And her efforts to do so was stymied by a big cultural gap in how you're supposed to relate to Authority. She was being all Stoic on the phone - "Just a little problem...", so the UK tax man just ignored her requests. Only months later when she realised she needed to get tearful and emotional - "We're starving! *sob*" did they finally grant her her personal allowance. British authorities expect a supplicatory tone; American authorities require a kind of cheerful stoicism.

 

[Celebrim]

I think there's a bit more going on than you seem to be allowing for. For example, Marx clearly does think that choices affect outcomes.

Well, yes, but he also thinks that certain choices are inevitable on the basis of the existing social relationships defined by the means of production, and further he believes that certain choices and only certain choices are irreversible. So, he would grant that society can vacillate for a time, but as he would put it, what is not impossible is inevitable.

So I don't see Marx as internally incoherent...

That's not really a debate I can get into within the rules of the forum. Suffice to say that I understand some people think Marx quite intelligent, and I on the other hand believe he's a raving loon and a megalomaniac with no more self-awareness and logic than your average schizophrenic.

To draw this back to the original topic, it can be interesting to ask "what explanation, if any, can be given for the fact that actor X at historically significant time T has a preference for A over B, and is able to effectively choose in favour of A?" So, for example, when you say -- the question can be asked "why did it make sense? to whom? and why did that person have the power/capacity to realise his/her preference over the preferences of others? or, if there were no competing preferences, why not?"

Ok, sure. At the time the Queendom came about, a disunited people found themselves at a strategic disadvantage with a highly agressive expansive neighbor with superior magical arts and technology. To aid in their desire to maintain their independence, they choose to emphasis their relationship to their neighbor through marriage. That is to say, they essentially said, "See, we aren't your enemy. We are under the rule of your sister." Because the people had no previous overlord, and because their Queen ruled wisely and had an idependent streak the quite independent people admired, and because she had only daughters, and because prior to unification it was natural first to see the role of high monarch as one that should naturally pass from woman to woman, and secondly it was natural to uphold this cultural difference as a marker that distinguished them from their much larger neighbor (were patrilinear succession was standard) and thereby became a sort of point of cultural pride. Of course, this only happened because the original Queen was skilled enough of a leader to make her wishes seem quite natural and desirable. Among those concerns were the fear that if she didn't succeed in creating a rule matrilinear succession to the throne, that her daughters wouldn't inherit it. But repetition made for habit and in the course of time that became the only way to do things and its still a source of cultural pride that they do things differently than their neighbors.

Of course, to fully explain this in the way I'd want to would probably take a novel, wherein the choices of the men and women were explained according to their beliefs and natures. But in game terms, the Queen is a 'player character' (not that I've actually game this out). Or in more general terms, she is a Hero(ine) and as such her character and actions have far ranging effects. One of those effects was the establishment of the only heriditary Queendom on the game world (and one of only two societies whose sovereign is female that I'm aware of, since I haven't really explored the whole world).

What struck me in this is your easy movement between "government", "sovereign" and "lord".

This is a very good point.

In at least some published setting material for fantasy RPGs, it is that easy terminological equivalence that can sometimes cause a sense of anachronism. (And knowing nothing of your campaign world other than your two posts about it in this thread, I'm not passing judgement on it. It's just you use of words that struck me.)

It's a while since I studied Roman Law, but as I recall it, well into the principate if not the dominate the imperial administration was still regarded as forming part of the personal household of the emperor, rather than a civil service in the modern sense. And going beyond that single example, Weber puts forward as one characteristic of modernity that offices and their property and functions become divorced from the personality and personal claims and interests of the office holder....This is part of what I had in mind when I suggested, in my earlier post upthread, that a quick-and-dirty way to get a feudal rather than modern feel is to make personal and parochical everything that in the modern world we regard as impersonal and abstract - local courts, tax collectors as private actors rather than public officials, "patriotic" duties owed to families, guilds, individual lords, etc, rather than to the nation or the community in the abstract.

There's no doubt that this is somewhat crude and simplistic, but I think it is the easiest way to convey a sense of a feudal world in a fantasy RPG.

I quite agree. One of the central differences between the modern and the pre-modern is the notion that the world is ruled by laws rather than men. Interestingly though, I think it is the Feudal System that first begins to blur this line and becomes the stepping stone from Rule of Man to Rule of Law. This is because the Feudal System encodifies the relationship between the leige and his subject. This leads directly to such things as the Magna Carter and eventually to the modern idea of a Constitution, but certainly back at the time of the feudal system society is governed primarily by private to private relationships.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but I think you can go a long way toward making your world feel suitably ancient by having things which we would now consider gross injustices be reutine: officials require bribes in order to do their duty, judges require payment before they'll hear a case, lords hear cases in which they are a party, taxation is arbitarily applied, the office of tax collector is up for sale to the highest bidder, people are judged according to their station, punishment is by a modern perspective grossly outsized to the crime, slavery is accepted as a part of life in even 'good' societies, and so forth. You don't have to put all of that into every society, but neither should your civic society parallel the modern.

 

[Celebrim]

her efforts to do so was stymied by a big cultural gap in how you're supposed to relate to Authority. She was being all Stoic on the phone - "Just a little problem...", so the UK tax man just ignored her requests. Only months later when she realised she needed to get tearful and emotional - "We're starving! *sob*" did they finally grant her her personal allowance. British authorities expect a supplicatory tone; American authorities require a kind of cheerful stoicism.

I find comments on these sorts of cultural differences emmensely fascinating.

 

[Gentlegamer]

There's also a respectable view in the history of ideas that holds that the idea of the state, in the modern sense of an abstract and impersonal system of offices and entitlements to which allegiance is owed, emerges only in the 17th century in the work of Hobbes.

If you're referring to the rule of laws rather than the rule of man, that goes back to Greece, and the polis . . . the origin of civilization.

 

[Bluenose]

If you're referring to the rule of laws rather than the rule of man, that goes back to Greece, and the polis . . . the origin of civilization.

That's the institution of the Polis, which I do agree contains a lot of the aspects of the modern concept of the state (and the Roman Republic/Empire contain more).

I'm not so sure about the rule of law rather than the rule of man. So much of the legal system wasad hoc, influenced by the prejudices of the jurors and the quality of the oratory. Certainly punishment was highly variable, depending on how popular you were. And of course there was plenty of scope for semi-legal punishments, which might themselves turn out a few years later after a change in government to be grounds for criminal cases. The law code of Hammurabi is a lot older and more defined, I suppose is as close as I can get to the word I want.