The State Held Ledgers Before Weapons—Why Did Writing and Accounting Need the State?

Good morning. This is Nagasaka Research Institute.

Starting with this installment, I will write over the next three parts about how to interpret world history in order to connect it to the theory of the state based on the origin of credit and debt systems.

Basically, I believe that the invention of writing and the invention of currency were factors that pushed communities toward becoming states.

After these three parts, I will serialize a slightly longer series on the theory of the state. Once that is finished, the current theory of the origin of credit and debt systems will be, for the time being, concluded.

After that, I plan to interpret world history and other topics through theory again. However, if the theory needs revision along the way, I will go back to talking about theory endlessly lol.

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Did the state appear from the beginning alongside kings and armies?

As communities grow larger, the need arises to collect harvests, distribute them to those who worked, and keep records of lending and borrowing.

Perhaps the core mechanism of the state was already present in ledgers even before the state was fully formed.

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Did the state begin with war?

When we hear the word 'state,' we think of kings, armies, city walls, and territory.

Certainly, to protect a community from external enemies and suppress internal conflict, those who command and military force are necessary. There is a certain logic to the idea of explaining the state through the monopoly on violence.

However, a community cannot survive with just an army.

Even if you gather soldiers, they will not move unless you feed them. Even if you build city walls, you cannot maintain them if you do not know who worked and how much. Even if you collect harvests, they will rot if you do not store them and distribute them to those who need them.

It was not just visible weapons that supported the state.

Behind them were mechanisms to track, collect, and distribute goods and people.

At least as far as ancient Mesopotamia is concerned, the prototype of the state appears not only in armies but also within the warehouses and ledgers of temples and palaces.

Memory alone cannot sustain a community.

In a small community, it is possible to keep track of who is working, who is receiving what, and who owes what through human memory.

However, as a community grows and the movement of people and goods increases, memory alone cannot keep up.

Who delivered the barley? Who participated in the construction of the temple? To whom were rations distributed for how many days? Who borrowed seeds and is expected to return them at the next harvest?

If such relationships are managed only by memory, forgetfulness and deception will occur.

If you deliver something but it is not recorded, dissatisfaction arises. If you return something but are accused of not having done so, anger arises. If distributions are handled incorrectly, the very trust in the community is destroyed.

That is why records become necessary.

Writing was not born solely to write stories.

It was also used to keep track of who delivered what and who received what.

Writing is not just for the sake of not forgetting.

It was also to ensure that delivered goods, days worked, seeds lent, and promises to return them were not lost outside of memory.

Temples and storehouses become the center of the community.

In ancient Mesopotamia, temples and palaces managed grain, livestock, land, and labor.

Harvested goods were collected in storehouses and distributed to those working for the temple or palace. Loans and labor days were also recorded.

Here, we find the 'common unit of value' discussed in monetary theory.

Instead of exchanging goods directly on the spot, different items and labor are counted based on barley or silver. Even if the physical goods do not move immediately, value can be recorded in ledgers and settled later.

Currency did not suddenly appear the moment coins were minted.

The mechanism of counting different goods and actions with a common unit, recording them as debt, and carrying them over to the future existed first.

Writing, accounting, and storehouses became linked to support that mechanism.

The one who collects becomes the one who distributes.

When the harvest of a community is gathered in one place, authority is born there.

It is not enough to simply guard the warehouse. One must decide how much to collect, how much to give to whom, and who to prioritize when there is a shortage.

The one who collects becomes the one who distributes.

The one who distributes determines the survival of the community.

In a year of good harvest, differences in distribution might not be noticeable. However, if a poor harvest or a flood occurs, the numbers recorded in the ledger draw closer to human life and death.

Who is given sufficient food, and who is put at the back of the line?

Within that lies the judgment of who is placed inside the community.

The ledger is not a neutral record.

The authority to record leads directly to the authority to distribute.

The core of the state is born within the administrative organization

The administrative organizations of temples and palaces cannot be called modern states as they are.

Within them, religion, ritual, agriculture, labor, and distribution existed without separation. Kingship, military, law, and territorial control were also combined over a long period of time.

However, some of the functions that the state would later take on were already there.

Gathering things within the community, recording human actions, and distributing stored goods. And managing who offers what to the community and what the community returns to whom.

This is the processing of credit and debt between the community and the individual.

Promises born through words leave individual memory once they are recorded.

Recorded debt does not disappear even if the person forgets it. As long as the person managing the record keeps it, it continues to exist within the system.

Here, debt changes from a relationship between people to a relationship between the community and the individual.

Even before the state was completed, the administrative mechanism that would become its core had already been born.

Does the ledger protect credit?

With a ledger, you can verify who paid and who received.

If records are used correctly, they can reduce fraud and protect the credibility of the community.

However, if those who handle the records monopolize the information, a different problem arises.

If you work but it is not recorded, it is as if you never worked. If you repay a debt but it is not in the ledger, it is as if you never repaid it. The side that holds the records can also decide the amounts to be collected or distributed.

Writing and accounting made communities larger.

At the same time, they divided those who held records from those who did not.

The prototype of the state is a mechanism for protecting credit, but it also becomes a mechanism for fixing debt and preventing individuals from escaping the community.

Ledgers are not neutral records.

Recording who to collect from and who to distribute to is also a way of deciding who must bear the community's debts.

Even before the state was completed, the power at its core was already within the ledgers.

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