The History of Community Capitalism.

Talk presented by Agustí Chalaux de Subirà Saturday, February 17, 2001 in the headquarters of the Randa Foundation.

1. Global forms of capitalism.

1. 1. On one hand, private capitalism as practiced exclusively for the last 4,500 years.

1. 2. On the other hand, ancestral, intelligently-renovated, community capitalism after these 4,500 years of total silence, thanks to the enormous technological advances of the current society, specifically of telecommunications and information technology, popularized in the form of the Internet.

2. Pardon me for my laziness because I have not prepared anything, for my bad Catalan and for my memory lapses which my listeners can supplement.

3. Firstly, don't be put off by the precision of the chronologies which I present to you because today, after the crass ignorance and the badly understood dating done by ancient, poetic religious traditions, we are beginning to have an idea of the prehistoric evolution of our so exceptional biological species.

4. The qualification «exceptional» which I give to our species comes from its exclusive, intimate and transcendent intelligence and from its consequent creation, in and of only itself, of a phenomenological intelligence of apparent matter, the limits of which, in its very body and the exterior world, entered in continuous conflict with the spirit of complete and profound liberty of every human being.

5. Previous definitions. So as not to lengthen this introduction, we will be giving the necessary definitions as we enter more deeply into the history of the phenomenological evolution of humanity.

First part: Origin of humanity: Very slow endogamic, endoethnic evolution from the origins until about 12,000 years ago. This last date is exclusively for Southwest Asia. In other places humanity followed a very slow endoethnic, endogamic trajectory which only began to extend itself to the rest of the earth and the rest of the populations after the warring era of the imperialisms, intra-imperialisms and inter-imperialisms begun about 2,000 years ago and which still continues.

6. During 4.5 million years, from the appearance of the human species on earth, people lived in nomadic endoethnic groups, with a completely community lifestyle. Based on the fossils discovered up to now, we know very little of their phenomenological progress, in production tools and culture. The stone tools are much later than the very probable wooden tools, which have not been observed (we only have remains of wooden tools after 12,000 years ago, as remains of small, lakeside groups in some tins of Switzerland).

7. Even though there are some phenomenological novelties known during the last 2 million years, the only important date is 500,000 years ago, since it is then that the great revolution of the taming of fire and smoke began, and of the collection and selection of species for the conservation of food, and therefore, of cooking, the first prodigious seed in the evolution of endoethnias. Then and there began endoethnic, community capitalism.

8. The first capitalism was originally endoethnic, community capitalism. The revolution described is called capitalism by us. Here we need a more precise definition of the first capitalism. «Capitalism» indicates conservation and accumulation of useful goods, exclusively phenomenological. It is a «useful good», a material good produced and used in the progressive evolution of man.

The word «capitalism» comes from the expression «head» (caput, capitem in Latin).

We don't know what language the people spoke 500,000 years ago. Today we use technical expressions derived from Greek and Latin roots.

The first community capitalism was known by those people in the form of «heads of fish» and «heads of game»: «two preserved fish fillets» represented «one head of fish», «two forequarter hams» and «two hams» represented «one head of game» (hams, in those times, were easier to transport than the body of a large game animal).

The routine explanation which Latins use of the heads of cattle that a landowner possessed in those times has nothing to do with the primitive concept of 500,000 years ago, since in those times neither agriculture nor cattle-raising existed.

9. Utilitarian goods are the object of personal egoism of men:

a. Persons foreign currency: nations, collectives, dynasties and families.

b. Individual persons objective, observed: from the origin of the species and

c. Persons subjective, self-conscious of their status perconscious and phenomenic
This last status very recent, only seen after the revelation of Abraham, of the prophets, of Jesus of Nazareth and of the French Revolution.

10. That community capitalism of the endoetnias, begun 500,000 years ago, was converted to private collective capitalism in the important revolution 100,000 years ago , of the specialization, which gave rise to multiple specialized totems in the primitive endoetnias

In our vocabulary, eminently technological, every expression with a Latin root represents an absolute arithmetic value, while the expressions with Greek roots are considered relative to multiple social factors of production, consumption and investment.

Example of the endoetniasof 100,000 years ago; in those times the endoetnias changed from community production of useful goods to specialized production which gave birth to multiple new specialized «totems»: the honey totem, the javelina totem, the cattle totem, the goat totem, the deer totem, etc.

One anecdote which aids in understanding that fundamental difference between difficult, specialized, random production and random production many times superior because of invention and not physical force is the following: some 15 specialized hunters under the guidance of a very competent lead hunter leave and return some time later tired and with two people injured which impedes their bringing back any game. Meanwhile two lazy «patentados» (this sounds like two who were on «leave of absence», a permission to be out of the group but it must be a local idiomatic term, sorry) of the endoetnia who were walking without doing anything heard the cries of an elephant which had fallen from a precipice. They went down to see what had happened, killed the elephant and ran back to camp to tell everybody in the endoétnica) community not to worry about food because they had (found?), in those times of persistent cold, food for a long time.

The utilitarian factors which intervene in the last part of the anecdote are very different from the productive factors in the first part. In both cases, the absolute production (from the Latin root) is only different in quantity. But the production relative to the productive-foristic (from the Greek root) efforts is very different. And it shows the fundamental difference between material productive efforts and progressive intelligent phenomenological efforts, in which the spirit of opportunity and inventiveness have much more practical importance than custom in the technique of production.

The ancestral community capitalism and the very new private, totemic capitalism have continued concurrently for the last 100,000 years of social history.

Since then, private capitalism has shown itself to be more efficient in the production (Latin expression: equal to absolute production) and in the foristic (Greek expression: equal to factors of production) than community capitalism, while the later has shown itself to be more efficient in the economy of the market, that is to say, in the just allocation («nomia») of the common good («oikos»), in favor of all members of whatever human community.

We have just used the phrase «economy of the market». The word «economy» has just been explained. Now we have to explain the term «market». In its first meaning («merere»: merit a value), the word «market» expresses the absolute value of each useful good. Its second meaning indicates that each useful good has to be valued not only objectively, but divided relatively into its elements according to many (subjective) circumstances.

The market always and in every private place was begun, within these 100,000 years of the multi-totem endoethnias, in the form of elemental gifts between two totems and each one with the others. The inter-totem gifts were made at different times and places: this mercantile circumstance created a confrontation between the totems... to see which gave more and better gifts. The consequence, in addition to the evident social effects (desire to surpass the other or sovereignty, badly intentioned generosity, avarice, etc), is that it was each time more ruinous.

Around 50 or 60 thousand years ago, this market, so ruinous, of elemental inter-totem gifts, was substituted by a market of elemental exchanges, which occurred between two people, at first totem, in a unique space and time. This great difference, between the first market of elemental gifts in different times and spaces and the second market of elemental changes in only one space and time between two different people, is that which explains why since then, if a market exists, in can only be one of elemental changes.

13. This market of elemental exchanges, starting 38 to 40 thousand years ago, took the form of marriage dowries. To measure exactly the dowry asked of a marriage candidate, the matriarchs invented arithmetic, as a multiple of basic units (in our case, for example, hams).

14. About 28 to 30 thousand years ago the matriarchies invented a very precise calendar of 13 months of 28 days (4 weeks of 7 days) and one day at the end of the year which permitted, at the level of astronomical knowledge of that time, the convergence of the cycles of the moon and the sun. In the Indo-euopean languages, the root «mn-» means, simultaneously, «mind», «moon», «month», «measure», «menstruation», etc.

15. About 18 to 20 thousand years ago the matriarchies invented the service matrimony, by which the man desiring to marry agreed to the following contract: during a set number of days each month, he would take care of the garden and the animals of his future spouse. This involved the days of her menstruation.

Second part: exclusively in southwest Asia and in that region separated from the rest of the planet from 12,000 to 2,500 years ago.

16. We pass on to the unwritten prehistory, proto-history and hipo-history and the written history of an exceptional region, Southwest Asia, isolated from 12,000 to 2,000 years ago, separated geographically, demographically and culturally:

a. Proto-history 12,000 to 9,500 years ago exclusively in Western Asia.

b. Hipo-history 9,500 to 2,500 years ago.

c. Written history 2,500 years ago to the present.

d. Since 2,500 years ago it all began to unify through the wars between the imperialisms.

17. a. Proto-history (exclusively in Southwest Asia).

a. a. Hyper-matriarchy: the first revolution that broke the endoethnias; its characteristic is to be in favor of warfare (12,000 to 11,000 years ago): pro-warfare sacrilege to pass from endoethnic endogamy to exoethnic, exogamic populations.

a. b. Pre-patriarchy (11,000 to 10,000 years ago) war-centered, creator of single-family nomadic warriors, with urgent needs for food. Nomadic for fear of the other families and for the search for food. No documentation. An archaeological silence of 1,000 years. Very rich archaeological digs before 11,000 years ago and very rich after 10,000 years ago. Explanation: war-centered destruction of the families. The victorious family killed all the people (genocide). They didn't have any place to incarcerate them and had nothing to feed them.

a. c. Auto-pacifying and federative proto-patriarchy (10,000 to 9,500 years ago). The revolution of the double families, multiple families and tribes of various multiple families. This was the autopacifying federation «Foedus» (no «Fides») with confidence in the adversary considered as an equal. The conquering patriarchy proposed slavery to themselves for the conquered family. The sedentary lifestyle was born. Here began the keeping of livestock, agriculture, horticulture and the crafts, each time closer to the free warriors of the family of the «masters of war» charged with protecting the slaves.

a. c. a. First period: double families: of conquerors and conquered.

a. c. b. Second period: multiple families, by the federation of diverse double families caused by fear of a common enemy.

a. c. c. Third period: multiple family tribes.

18. b. Hipo-history.

b. a. Period of Southwest Asia (9,500 to 6,000 or 5,000 years ago); monetary, from 8,500 years ago, to measure the comparative value of different merchandise. Permitted trade using the rule of three (ratios).

b. a. a. Multi-tribal imperial cities (9,500 to 8,500 years ago).

b. a. b. Monetary period 8,500 to 6,500 years ago. The invention of money (Denise Schmandt-Besserat, «The first antecedent of writing)», Investigation and Science), number 23, August, 1984: representative effigy of that which each partenaire offered. The monetary representation was the property of each property owner. To count (rosary). The birth of numerical barter between individuals.

b. b. The Sumer Period 6,500 to 2,500 years ago. Money appears. With the slow invention of writing, the transfer from the account of the buyer to the account of the seller.

b. b. a. The Pro-money Period: pre-accounting based on branches of green wood.

b. b. b. The Money Period: abstract, arithmetic monetary units which in the temple of money interfere legally with abstract, exclusively accounting numbers from the current account A of the buyer to the current account B of the buyer. The red temple of Uruk has legal accounting archives for 200 years, between 3,400 and 3,200 years ago (they are not translated because they would show the superiority of Sumer to the banks of today).

Third part: c. History: from 2,500 years ago to the semitic city-empire of Accad infiltrated into the originating cities of Sumer.

c. a. The Accadian Era 2,500 to 2,300 years ago. A time of great inventions (tolerance and culture).

c. a. a. Semitic Accad 2,500 to 2,400 years ago.

c. a. a. a. Metallurgical Center, because of fire, of gold, silver and copper. The Semites of Accad were metalworkers (typical work in the desert). First invention: metallurgy with fire (gold, known 14,000 years ago; silver, known since 8,000 years ago; copper known 3,200 years ago.)

c. a. a. b. Second invention: the discovery of aqua regia: nitric acid plus hydrochloric acid used to determine the degree of purity of any alloy of gold, silver and copper in the form of nuggets, dust and chunks.

c. a. a. c. Discovery of the precision balance and of measuring weight, for the first time.

a. b. The Second Accad Era from 2,400 years ago to Sargón I: the practical implantation of anonymous metal money by the city-empires of Sumer. Bankers with a small bank (gold or silver plus aqua regia and a precision balance) which allowed them to flee easily from the temple police.

c. b. The Post-Acadian Era of Corruption (2,400 years ago until the present).

c. b. a. The First Period: from the palace revolution in Accad, in favor of Sargón I, for the corruption of anonymous money. Implantation of anonymous metal money in the other native city-empires of Sumer from 2.400 to 2.371 years ago.

c. b. b. The Second Period: Sargón I y Sargónidas. (from 2,371 to 2,191 years ago). First imperialism: controls Sumer and all of Mesopotamia.

c. b. c. The Third Period: Second imperialism (total corruption) (from 2,191 years ago). With the Gutis, city of Zagros, invader of Mesopotamia, the bankers implanted pseudo-metal, anonymous money, abstract, just a promise on paper (which dominated the world economy, in the form of an institutional lie, until August of 1971, when Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold, denouncing unilaterally the Bretton Woods accords of 1944).

c. c. The era of all the posterior imperialisms in an implausible disorder during 4,000 years of cruel and useless wars, both civil (internal) and anti-humanistic (exterior). This disorder has increased with the centuries, during all these years. And it has increased in an extraordinary manner during the last centuries of Europe and the last three centuries of the worldwide imperialism of the United States.

The ancestral communitarian capitalism was destroyed by the radically abstract money system under the pseudo-metallic-concrete lie. And in these four millenniums the banks have only allowed private capitalism to survive.

All the inventions of the banks since then have the objective that all the banks together and each one in particular are removed from the ancestral community capitalism. The scheme backfired, but they are consoled because the new monetary regime suits them and they install themselves in it even though it is deceptive, which evidently they didn't make public. This ignorance of banking endures to the present, as we have said, in a cruel, stupid, warmongering manner, with no strategic objective. The bankers can only give as their excuse their total ignorance, beneath an ambiance of cynicism.

The reigning governments and political systems during these last 4,000 years con only invoke their stupid indifference with respect to the power of the banks, when not of their even more stupid cynicism.

Fourth Part: The restoration of the ancestral communitarian capitalism (is possible) thanks to enormous technological progress in telecommunications/computing in general and the Internet in particular.

First chapter: No one can deny to Maurice Allais (born in Paris in 1911), winner of the Nobel prize in Economics (1988), the benefits of resurrecting ancestral communitarian capitalism. But, --since its implantation requires in the first place a political decision and secondly control over market activities--, Allais stopped supporting it because his proposal, since it required a previous political decision went against two sacred dogmas of distinguished economists.

The first dogma: «The economy is independent of politics and politics cannot intervene in the economy.»

The second dogma of distinguished economists is that anonymous money is a necessary condition for the personal liberty of the users of the market: by anonymous money we mean money that cannot be traced, that is impersonal, that permits irresponsible behavior and that does not allow measurement, etc.; a secure guarantee of impunity both judicial and antisocial honesty, in favor of every person who, whatever crimes and delinquencies they have commited, is sufficiently rich and astute to pay the price of all necessary complicities and compromises, professional, corporate, family, dynastic, etc.

Second chapter: It is necessary to acknowledge that, in those times, we did not have the enormous technological advances in telecommunications and computing (exclusively by signals), in general, and of the Internet in particular.

Today the proposal of Maurice Allais is very easy to put into practice: it only requires a very simple political decision: without needing to touch anything in the banking or accounting structures or current social customs. This is the great advantage of the first phase of communitarian capitalism explained below.

The proposal of Maurice Allais is very simple: given that 95% of the inhabitants of any country with a certain level of economic power find it necessary to deposit their money in some bank or in more than one. Meanwhile in reality only 20 or 25 percent are sufficiently solvent so that banks will grant them loans. This situation generates in the banks some enormous excesses of private money, radically unused.

In consequence, the proposal of Maurice Allais amounts essentially to the following simple mechanism: Every account holder will go to his bank(s) to grant it(them) a contract by which is ceded for their ancient and legitimate function of lending the totality or a part of the account: the rest, free from this contract, will be called «balance free from the bank contract».

Thanks to the advances in telecommunications, computing and Internet, the total of these free balances, even though they remain in each bank, will pass to the disposition of a communitarian bank, created by law. The quantity of private money put at the disposition of the communitarian bank will be, by all evidence, very important.

The communitarian bank will only be able to disburse money according to laws established by the political authority, in favor of each socio-economic sector.

The first socio-economic sector is that of sufficient acquisitive power by consumers, actual and potential, of our society, not only unjust, but also underdeveloped: it will consist of the periodic disbursal of a basic wage to each consumer, who does not have resources, in goods and in money, greater than, for example, $60,000.

According to this law, consumers, until now potential, will be converted into active consumers: children, pregnant women and nursing mothers, mothers with children; adolescents from 16 to 25, the sick, the injured, the handicapped, old people, immigrants without resources, etc. and the openly lazy. Information technology will calculate the quantity of communitarian money which, according to this law, the communitarian bank will have to disburse, automatically and exclusively in favor of consumers, to all individual consumers inscribed in the civil registry. Until 16 years, children and adolescents will be under the tutelage of their parents of the civil authority which substitutes for them.

The second sector will be public health, the third teaching, education and public instruction. And the fourth that of energy and the communications most necessary for all everyone.

The following sectors will be studied later.

Agustí Chalaux de Subirà.
Barcelona, version of the 23rd of May, 2001.