Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

by James C. Scott

that the great walls of China were built as much to keep Chinese taxpayers in as to keep the barbarians out.

As the Berber saying so eloquently attests, “Raiding is our agriculture.”

In the multitude of people is the king’s honor, but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince. —Proverbs 14:28

in the absence of either compulsion or the chance of capitalist accumulation, there was no incentive to produce beyond the locally prevailing standards of subsistence and comfort. Beyond sufficiency in this respect, that is, there was no reason to increase the drudgery of agricultural production.

By systematically replenishing the state’s manpower base by slaving and by protecting and expanding the state with its military services, the barbarians willingly dug their own grave.