[ssf] Rock the Casba Re: [sheffield-anti-war-coalition] The Formation of the State among Germans

[adam bashid]

27/02/07 11:20 GERALD ALI wrote:

>  "According to Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, in the tenth century the chief industry of Verdun -- in the Holy German Empire, observe -- was the manufacture of eunuchs, who were exported at great profit to Spain for the Moorish harems." 
> 
> That's a way of making a living.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep, but it's a bugger when you get your fingers trapped ( between the 
bricks ) as the old joke goes

> ''in the form of mark communities'' the 'mark' is also called the parish or ward.

Or an 'hundred' or a 'wapentake' [1] as in a division of a 'shire' [cf. 
2] ...

i draw your attention to the 'Chiltern Hundreds', a position of legal 
fiction, appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "now used as a 
procedural device to allow resignation from the House of Commons, which 
is not otherwise permitted under British law (a legal anomaly dating 
back to past centuries when Members of Parliament (MPs) were often 
elected to serve against their will" [3]

You can a imagine the ping-pong nowadays between Nr 10 and Nr 11 can't 
you ...

[ Nr 10 ]

go on gordon, give us the hundreds
i dunna wanna govern any longer

[ Nr 11 ]

tone, tone, don't be like that --
a job 'sa job --
and you're well compensated in cash and honours

[ Nr 10 ]

cash, oh cash, me and mon cherie have got loads, let me go,
oh let me go, i'm not a number, i'm a free man

[ Nr 11 ]

yes, but is it enough tone, is it enough --

think now, in 20 years time
when the pennines have a coast line
you'll need all the krugerrands you can muster
just to keep from going under ...

... and think about your honour !

[ Nr 10 ]

history will be the judge of that

[ Nr 11 ]

grow up --
this thing called ''history'' is a myth --
and whilst you're in power,
you are the myth maker --

but once you're gone, you're gone
and *your* honour will slowly crumble
it's bound to ...

[ Nr 10 ]

no,
but you'll defend me, won't you

[ Nr 11 falls about laughing ]

[ Nr 10 ]

won't you

[ Nr 11 ]

i'm not a lawyer tone,
and anycase i've my own myths to make

> "The gens [ latin for clan] was lost in the mark community, in which, however, traces of its origin in the kinship of its members are often enough still visible.
> 
> But what was the mysterious magic by which the Germans breathed new life into a dying Europe? Was it some miraculous power innate in the Germanic race, such as our chauvinist historians romance about?"

> Frederick Engels 
> Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State 
> 
> Chapter VIII: The Formation of the State among Germans [4]

There are a set of lectures [5] with an analogous theme that were 
delivered in the USA and England by a bloke called John Fiskes -- These 
lectures are dated 1879/1880, some four years before the publishing of 
Engels work in 1884 -- In Fiskes' lectures its the Anglo-Saxon rather 
than the Germans that gets talked-up to have the Manifest Destiny ...

> III.
> 
> 
> "_MANIFEST DESTINY_."
> 
> Among the legends of our late Civil War there is a story of a
> dinner-party given by the Americans residing in Paris, at which were
> propounded sundry toasts concerning not so much the past and present as
> the expected glories of the great American nation. In the general
> character of these toasts geographical considerations were very
> prominent, and the principal fact which seemed to occupy the minds of
> the speakers was the unprecedented _bigness_ of our country. "Here's to
> the United States," said the first speaker, "bounded on the north by
> British America, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, on the east by the
> Atlantic, and on the west by the Pacific, Ocean." "But," said the second
> speaker, "this is far too limited a view of the subject: in assigning
> our boundaries we must look to the great and glorious future which is
> prescribed for us by the Manifest Destiny of the Anglo-Saxon Race.
> Here's to the United States,--bounded on the north by the North Pole,
> on the south by the South Pole, on the east by the rising and on the
> west by the setting sun." Emphatic applause greeted this aspiring
> prophecy. But here arose the third speaker--a very serious gentleman
> from the Far West. "If we are going," said this truly patriotic
> American, "to leave the historic past and present, and take our manifest
> destiny into the account, why restrict ourselves within the narrow
> limits assigned by our fellow-countryman who has just sat down? I give
> you the United States,--bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on
> the south by the precession of the equinoxes, on the east by the
> primeval chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment!"

Germans, Anglo-Saxons, what's the difference really -- i mean, smoking 
is still verboten in the underground whichever, but joking apart, John 
Marciano has some lectures entitled *Empire as a Way of Life* [6] that 
puts this stuff in to modern dress ...


> The manifestation of this Christian racism received its ultimate blessing in the US in the mid-19th century, under the term "Manifest Destiny." God – who of course was a White, Anglo-Saxon Male, gave US citizens of English descent his blessings as they went about pillaging and destroying the land, culture and people of the Americas – and engaged in attacks upon the Irish, Chinese, Blacks and others.

auf wiedersehen
-- 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_%28division%29

[2] 18/01/07 16:04 GERALD ALI wrote:

>  The Commons had arrived.
> 
>        Who were the Commons ?
> 
>            -- Parliament is Feudal : Kenneth Mackenzie

  Older than Alfred,
  to whom their institutions
  was popularly ascribed,
  the shires had been the unit area
  of Anglo-Saxon local government,
  and the shire court,
  in which knights and freemen attended,
  was the organ of local justice
  and administration.

  The Norman settlement arrested
  their development
  as centres of local authority,
  but when Henry II sent his justices
  into the shire courts,
  their corporate identity
  began to revive.

  Legal community led naturally
  to political community.

  The shires began to petition
  for local liberties,
  to claim an increasing share
  of local government
  and to secure the choice
  of their own officers.

  The shires
   in fact
    became fully developed communities --
     _communes_ --
     'Commons'.

  At the same time
  the shires began to acquire
  fiscal unity.


  In the eleventh century
  the tenant-in-chief
  was the normal intermediary
  for the collection of feudal dues
  from the knights and free tenants,
  while the sheriffs collected revenues
  due to the king
  from his own domain land.

  King John,
  with characteristic contempt
  for feudal principal,
  broke away from this system.

    In 1207 he instituted what was
    in fact
    the first national tax,
    as opposed to feudal due,
    by exacting one shilling in the mark,
    loosely called a thirteenth,
    upon the chattels of every layman,
    within or without
    the domain lands.

    This tax
    (which in the thirteenth century
     became the principal
     source
     of revenue)
    was naturally based upon
    the shires,
    and its collection
    and assessment was entrusted
    to commissions of knights and freeholders.

    In 1213,
    John summoned four knights
    from each shire to Oxford:

    'to speak with us
     about the business
     of our kingdom'.

  It is not hard to guess
  what the formula meant.

  The business was financial.

  This was the precedent for the summons
  to the knights in 1254.



  Like the shires,
  the boroughs were a pre-Conquest institution
  and had,
  in the course of centuries,
  gradually achieved a measure of self-government,
  acquiring charters
  and the right to elect their own officers.

  Like the shires,
  too,
  but by a somewhat different process,
  they had acquired the right to assess their own taxes.

  They too were communities --
  _communes._

  It was only natural
  that Simon de Montfort
  should call on them also for support.


  Not without justification has
  Simon de Montfort been called
  the founder of the Commons.

  Although knights of the shire
  had been summoned to earlier assemblies
  in 1213 and 1254,
  Simon de Montfort
  by summoning also
  the citizens and burgesses in 1265
  may be said to have completed
  the representation of the _communes._

  Moreover the precedent he set
  was followed at least once by Henry III,
  in 1268,
  and was taken up again by Edward I
  at the outset of his reign.


[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiltern_Hundreds
[4] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch08.htm
[5] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10112/10112-8.txt
[6] http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/03/364938.html