Part 1. Fundamentals.

Beneath all the accumulated cultural baggage (and garbage) erected on the foundations of hierarchical mass societies, now dominated by the capitalist mode of production, the most important factors determining life on earth in general and human life in particular are frequently ignored or insufficiently considered. These basic fundamentals comprise of the internal relationships of each species individual to each other (the social dimension) and their relationships to their means of production and reproduction (the bio-chemical dimension). The phases or stages of life on earth, which I abbreviate here and elsewhere as (N-M-G-R + A-D) are those which cover both of these two these dimensions. Without adequate bio-chemical Nutrition (N) there can be no Metabolic processes and synthesis (M) and without (M) there will be little or no Growth (G). Furthermore, without sociability in some form, there would be no sexual Reproduction (R), and without the first three stages being completed and species reproduction (R), taking place, there would be no continuation of life – only extinction. Ageing (A) ensures death (D) and death ensures the recycling of all organic materials into (N) for other forms of life on earth  – and so life goes on.  In general we humans may not think of life on earth in this way, but perhaps we should. The life-cycle stages represented by (N-M-G-R + A-D) are the foundation of all forms of life on earth.

Outside of the current hierarchical mass society forms, the ‘natural’ affinity of human and non-human social animals for forms of non-hierarchical social living, means that when infant and childhood dependence has ended, the continued association between humans is naturally voluntary and negotiated, rather than socially controlled or manipulated. Indeed, before the onset of agriculturally based hierarchical mass society formations, the human species was no exception in this regard. For many hundreds of thousands of years, hunting and gathering by humans was sustainable because, like other animal, predators or grazers, obtaining nutrition was ‘natural’ and primarily took place for reasonably immediate consumption only. Until the colonial era, most of global humanity existed in this way. The few remaining 21st century hunter-gatherer communities (approximately fifty worldwide) still maintain that sustainable relationship with nature. However, with the onset of hierarchical mass society systems, in certain regions, the history of humanities evolutionary journey became diverted into a series of elite determined, self-alienating modes of association and production, egotistically labelled ‘civilisation’.

Consequently, one of the most important factors determining the continued existence of the agriculturally-based, hierarchical forms of human social existence has been the techniques and technology of social control. Controlling the human and non-human factors (nature) involved in the mass production and mass consumption of the inorganic and organic materials needed for large-scale human and animal life to survive within them, became a fundamental condition of these systems. The non-human animal and plant resources needed to be controlled and regulated, both to ensure the regular availability and sufficiency of (N); likewise the availability and sufficiency of the human skill and energy needed to process these resources also needed to be controlled and regulated. Therefore, the plant and animal resources were controlled by the early technological means of fencing, planting, reaping, storing, cooking and consuming. In the case of animal nutrition, the additional means of control included shackling, chaining and inflicting pain through sensitive areas such as the nose, the mouth, the neck and the buttocks, before slaughtering, dismembering and consuming.

Indeed, in hierarchical mass societies, the technical means of controlling human beings when required to labour as slaves, serfs or peasants, in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome for example, replicated all the above noted control measures applied to the ‘domestication’ of animals. For until these unfortunate captured humans were sufficiently ‘tamed’ to work for ‘the system’ without being whipped or tortured and without frequently running away, the technology of animal shackling, imprisoning and whipping was used to control the human labouring population. This was something repeated during the colonial era. Historically, an alternative, less-violent technique of domesticating human beings, was also invented and this is usually referred to as the process of ‘socialisation’. Nevertheless, socialisation incorporates essentially the same technological features (less the shackles – but not always) as domestication does for animals. Socialisation in general is the process of successfually adapting the behaviour of social individuals to the then dominant hierarchical mass society mode of production, exchange and consumption needed to obtain the organic and inorganic materials needed for mass society living.

The popular biblically derived phrase; ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, indicates that from from early to later times in hierarchical mass societies, sticks, fists and whips were the ‘hard’ technologies used to exert control over young and old, male and female, for any minor infringements of socially prescribed etiquette or behaviour. For major infringements, the long history of instruments of imprisonment, torture and the associated techniques of capital punishment, indicate what were the common hierarchical mass society technologies behind the more severe aspects of control, within them. However, ‘softer’ forms of control have also long been exerted by developing the techniques of reward, disapproval and reprimand. These are the additional social means by which animals as well as people can be persuaded to metaphorically or literally jump through hoops or over hurdles that they would otherwise choose to avoid.

In other words socialisation within hierarchical mass societies also involves intellectual and cultural techniques which amount to a meta form of institutionalised grooming. In this sense, all citizens who manage to be relatively comfortably ‘fit in’ to ancient and modern hierarchical mass societies, have been successfully socialised or groomed. Those who are not successfully socialised/groomed or resist its forms of control and remain ‘alienated’ by the hierarchical mass society system are considered by those who are, as the various intellectual and social ‘misfits’ – which interestingly, have always existed in one form or another. In modern, capitalist based, hierarchical mass societies the ‘mis-fits’ often become ‘rebels with or without cause’ alcoholics, drug takers, self-harmers, criminals and are to be found among the occupants of prison wards, psychiatric suites, park benches, shop doorways or members of gangs and terrorist cells.

Although blaming these various resisters and ‘victims’ of the hierarchical mass society system is the reactionary position of the ‘establishments’ self-defense mechanism, their existence is revealing. Adding up all numbers of such modern alienated and partly or totally un-socialised citizens, would reveal a staggering figure. It  would also expose the magnitude of the relative and absolute human rejection of the hierarchical mass society ‘system’. Such numbers would of course also reveal the fact that despite all the high intensity efforts of persuasion, rewards and subtle or severe punishments at their disposal, the elites who overehelmingly control and benefit from the hierarchical mass society systems are unable to reconcile large numbers of human beings to their system of discrimination, exploitation and oppression.

Yet it also remains a fact that many more can be reconciled to a life of 24/7 drudgery serving and supporting the elites within hierarchical mass societies, by much softer techniques. They can be persuaded to overlook the detrimental effect on their own and loved ones health and well being and to the increasing detriment of the planets natural balance of, air, water, soil and other life forms. Thus, it becomes obvious from a study of the history and evolution of hierarchical mass societies that in addition to force and compulsion the human species – being an intellectually developed species – have also been controlled by the successful means of intellectual and emotional manipulation directed from pulpit, classroom, state edict or political benches. Of course, the success of schooling and propaganda, is itself almost entirely dependent upon being constantly backed up by reward, disapproval and a sufficiently large  range and severity of punishments.

Therefore, the history of hierarchical mass societies is also the parallel history of the elite specialists who use physical, technical and intellectual means of identifying, enforcing, rationalising and applying various technical means of social control. The purpose of control is so that the hierarchical mass society system, which predominantly functions for the benefit of the elites, is able to continue. Evidence from the records of history, indicates that these techniques and practices are independent of the particular mode of production in place at the time. It is also independent of whatever the ethnicity, gender, religion or politics of the current elite happens to be! By their very alienated and alienating socio-economic structures, the functioning of hierarchical mass society systems, whether during the Fuedal, Capitalist, Fascist, Liberal, Religious, Socialist, or Communist iterations, all need to be constantly controlled by an elite and its members – animal and human – governed and disciplined. I will consider the latest non-physical high-tech improvements to the way elites exert control over the, intellectual and emotional relationships of the masses under their control in a later part 3 of this series.

Meanwhile it is worth considering the results of a social and psychological appraisal of human responses to events triggered by an elite determined competitive (death-agony) struggle between rival capitalist based hierarchical mass society power-blocs, during the 20th century. In the aftermath of the Second World War during the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi elites for genocide and Crimes against Humanity, the prosecuting side (the allies) depicted the Nazi elite and their followers as despicable, degenerate sadistic monsters. In contrast many of the defending Nazis at the trial claimed they were only ordinary men and women just following orders. Which of these opposed depictions was the most accurate became an issue for some people at the time, but one which had to wait until later when anger and recriminations had died down. A more accurate understanding of participants war conduct would need to be obtained by considering the alienating and alienated reality of most – if not all – members of all hierarchical mass societies. The question to be addressed later was did the particular socio-economic systems effect its members in both these ways and in a number of others. For example, it was obvious that there are those in all classes, genders and ethnicities who become racist and elitist; there are those who become misogynist and controlling.

There are also those who become intolerant and brutal, others who become gentle and as we shall see there are many who just ‘borrow’ their thinking and activities from influencers and therefore follow trends, go along with the crowd and those who unthinkingly obey orders. During and in the aftermath of this trial, the commonly articulated demonising of the ordinary German population, many of whom directly or indirectly contributed willingly to the worst horrors of the war effort, as inhuman monsters, was criticised by only a few on the allied side. In particular, a female academic Hannah Arendt eventually coined the term ‘banality of evil‘ and produced a lengthy book entitled ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’. The term banality was an indirect reference to the extensive divisions of labour within hierarchical mass societies. These ‘normalised’ divisions within such societies exist in such a way that whole societies once engaged in modern warfare easily became complicit in everything that happens. The extensive divisions of labour in hierarchical mass societies, combined with the highly efficient technical levels of production of the essentials for living, enable an extensive specialisation of public and hidden roles to be developed and sustained by elite interests.

The war effort in Germany, during 1914-18 and 1939-45, was organised in such a way that a clerk doing nothing more than processing railway time tables was complicit in enabling the railway system to not only deliver food, but to also transport bombs, shells, bullets as well as Jewish and socialist victims to death camps and gas chambers. Similarly, the canteen workers providing meals for concentration camp guards and the Gestapo did not themselves abuse, kill or gas any victims, but they enabled other individuals within the system to remain healthy and energetic whilst following orders to do so and others to carry out the brutal bombing of civilians and other ‘specialists’ to inflict torture or acts of extermination. The same hierarchical mass society systems allowed sequences of specialists to design, manufacture and deliver the most brutal forms of mass killing by chemical, biological and eventually by atomic means.

But before any reader becomes myopic or nationalistically prejudiced it should be remembered that not only the citizens of Germany, Italy and Japan were engaged in their own war effort in such a routine socialised way, but so too where the citizens of the UK, the USA and their various allies. All hierarchical mass societies – on all sides of these wars against other countries – had their workers producing bombs, shells and bullets and their transport clerks processing their delivery to those in their armed forces who then followed orders and aimed them directly at civilians. If war is evil, and I suggest all torture and killing can be so classified, then all sides in both those wars demonstrated their own versions of Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’. Personally, I prefer to classify torture and killing as the ‘banality (or tyranny) of the normal’ within the ancient and modern hierarchical mass society formations, I have studied.  Furthermore, the phenomenon continued to exist for the rest of the 20th century, in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., and continues in the 21st. In other words, in hierachical mass societies, not everyone was (or is) committing atrocities but many by following scheduled tasks, obeying specific orders and staying silent, were (and are) directly and indirectly enabling such atrocities to be committed by others.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2023.

(Part 2. ‘Following the Leader’. Will be published shortly.)