“Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire
There are gaps in our education that lead us to think the most appalling things.
Two of the best mysterious-gap-filling history books I’ve read in recent years are Gerda Lerner’s The Creation of Patriarchy and Chris Harman’s A People’s History of the World.
Once some of the gaps have been filled, you can even see why Chris Harman’s tribe (the Socialist Workers’ Party) and Gerda Lerner’s tribe (radical feminists) are currently at odds with each other.
Gaps Harman’s book filled
“We” got into the first world war because everyone was really, really upset about Archduke Franz Ferdinand getting killed…right? “We” got into the second world war because Hitler was murdering Jews… or was it because he was taking over other countries? But “we” won it in the end because Japan got up one morning and decided to attack Pearl Harbour which is um, American… right?
So why on earth did Japan attack Pearl Harbour? Is it in Japan?
Strangely, to even see why that is strange, we need to look again at two ideas that we’ve grown inured to, that we really should see as very, very stupid: slavery and “the sex industry”. Why see people as things you can buy and sell? Why cause all that misery and conflict?
It’s property, basically. If you put all your faith and security in owning land, you have to fight for it. If you fight for land, you end up with all the people who were using it as your prisoners. If you want to nail your ownership of the land going forward, you have to control them, and own your own progeny, and so you have to own those people who make babies happen. You have to own a lot of people. And you have to keep expanding your borders and your “influence” to control those people you need to own.
The funny thing is, all that does appear to make sense — or at least it appears to be inevitable — until you’ve unlearned the nonsense that created patriarchy in the first place. The nonsense that accustoms us to thinking of humans as acquisitive bastards.
Gerda Lerner’s the one for that.
Perhaps alongside Nick Hayes’ stonkingly eye-opening Book of Trespass
In case you don’t want to read a whole book to find out, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour because the USA were using their air/sea military base in Pearl Harbour to blockade the flow of raw materials Japan needed to get on with their own expansion-and-control projects in their part of the world.
It’s easier to work backwards when unravelling all the nonsense so, having read most of Harman’s book, I’ve started going back through all the “explanations” I learned at school having a load of “oh I seeeee!” moments, but what about going forwards?
Before we can fix all the nonsense, we need more people to understand why, in 2024, “we have to vote Labour to get the Tories out” counts as one of Voltaire’s absurdities. And people won’t get that until they understand the difference between communism (which is what most people think Russia was doing all through the 20th century) and state capitalism (which is what Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were actually doing).
We are, after all, making some progress. It would seem that the three million or so people who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2024 get why the left are calling Starmer ‘Stalin’ these days.
[Addendum in response to a couple of messages: Yes, I know, the idea is 50 years behind as ever – our new government are not capitalists, they are neoliberals, but that’s worse – they will literally sell anything, regardless of whether it exists and, as ever, regardless of who starves as a result.]
In short, when you’ve filled enough of the holes, you’ll see that most of what we call politics has always been the story of the landowners, the super-rich and their paid up politicians misdirecting us over issues of sex, race or class so they can get on with squabbling over profit and property — the two nonsense ideas that create the terminal sickness of mankind – the neurotic need to control lands and people, in the name of “security”.
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Dear Reader,
Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.
Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 
4 responses to “Mysterious holes in history”
The possession of the UK dates back to the Norman Conquest, since when we have been a land possessed and a people dispossessed, if we were not already that under Anglo Saxon rule. To this day, ordinary people in the UK have no right of access to land and housing is not a human right, which is interesting given that we are first and foremost natures creatures and the earth is our natural birth right, no less than all the Earth’s creatures which also have very little protection from the predations and greed of the worst of human kind. Many of England’s biggest hereditary land owners date back to the Norman invasion, but if ordinary people attempt to grab a tiny plot of land today it does not go well.
The Book of Trespass is a brilliant book that I am in the process of reading, soon to be joined by The Creation of Patriarchy and The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, for which many thanks.
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I now picture you zooming through white water in your kayak with a book open in front of your nose. 😀
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Ha ha ha ha, thank you and now I wish I was a cartoonist. All the best Kay and thanks for all you do.
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You too! There are, after all, so many of us. I am quite exhausted by that People’s History book – we, the 99%, really never have stopped trying to fix it. I suppose this is a Tony Benn moment – there is no final victory and no final defeat – just The Struggle – so take a holiday – bloody go kayaking! (or something like that).
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