Economic Compulsions, city states
The Sculptor and His Statues, by Pablo Picasso (Date: 1933)
Before explaining the evidently simultaneous economic and political forces driving the emergence of ancient cities in Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, and Egypt there are some methodological matters to review. In two posts I will meander through a topography of imperatives that stand like everlasting statues in the historical landscape of social and economic life.
Today’s topic: overwhelming materialist determinants of social and political action.
Economic imperatives will have motivated city and state formation in all (type 4) administered societies. The assumptions I outline will be tested against historical evidence in future posts. I will be advocating a materialist theorisation of ancient city governance origins. Given this focus on ‘economic’ influences, I offer a definition:
By ‘economy’ I refer to four factors:
actual social processes and goals of production and consumption;
physically available material resources for production…