(Ehret’s Critique of “Civilization” — The Deliberate Avoidance of the Word “Civilization” Throughout the Book Because What Have Been Called Civilizations Wer…

(Ehret’s Critique of “Civilization” — The Deliberate Avoidance of the Word “Civilization” Throughout the Book Because What Have Been Called Civilizations Were Simply the Earliest Highly Stratified and Usually Unequal and Oppressive Societies, Monument Building Not Testifying to Superior Intelligence but to the Concentration of Wealth and Power in the Hands of the Few, the Centralized Control of Institutions and Ideologies of Power and Command Over Instruments of Coercion Enabling Kings to Draft Labor Forces for Monuments, the Concentration of Wealth Giving Royalty and Priesthoods the Means to Support Professional Artists): Ehret notes that he has deliberately not used the word “civilization” throughout the book. In concrete material terms, what have been called civilizations were simply the earliest highly stratified and, usually, unequal and oppressive societies. The building of monuments and the production of elaborate art by those societies did not mean that their peoples were somehow smarter or more able. What monument building actually testifies to is the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. It was the centralized control of the institutions and ideologies of power and the centralized command over the instruments of coercion that enabled kings to draft the necessary labor forces for building large monuments. It was the concentration of wealth and power that gave royalty and priesthoods the means to support professional artists and to commission their artistic works. The critique is devastating in its simplicity. The Great Pyramid of Giza is not a testament to Egyptian genius. It is a testament to Egyptian coercion — to the ability of a pharaoh to command the labor of tens of thousands of workers to pile stone upon stone for the glorification of a single man’s corpse. The Parthenon was built by a slave-owning democracy. The Colosseum was built by an empire that fed human beings to animals for entertainment. The monuments that the Western academy holds up as proof of civilizational achievement are, if one looks at them honestly, proof of civilizational oppression — material evidence that a small elite had accumulated enough power to compel the labor of thousands for projects that served no purpose other than the aggrandizement of that elite. To call this “civilization” and to treat societies that did not produce such monuments as “uncivilized” is to confuse the ability to oppress with the ability to create.