Despite the “caste-like” patterns, there was inter-generational social mobility whereby slaves could become freedmen, freedmen could become freemen, and freemen could even become nobles. This allowed “talented members of the lower castes” to rise without creating major disruptions in the social system.[84] Kinship remained of some importance, and as a result it would take several generations for newly risen men to develop a strong kinship group. Indeed, Pearson provides evidence from a variety of I-E cultures that individuals’ reputation required at least three generations within a given status-group (e.g., freeman) to be full members of that group. Pearson notes that this is consistent with an Omaha-type kinship system that emphasizes vertical (ego, father, grandfather) rather than horizontal relationships more typical of clan-societies.[85] Congruent with this, according to the Visigothic Code mentioned above, only in the second generation could a descendant of a freedman testify in court.
Nevertheless, as discussed below, I-E groups were certainly not impermeable by being limited to members of the kinship group; rather, they were based on individual accomplishment, particularly as seen in the Männerbünde.
In this sense, I-E groups must be considered fundamentally individualist. As Hans-Peter Hasenfratz notes, the boundaries between the three social classes in ancient Germanic societies were not rigid. Warriors had the most prestige in society and were recruited from the peasants and the sons of warriors. Moreover, “a slave could become free by acts of bravery; a peasant could become a noble, and a noble could become a king.”[86]
It cannot be overemphasized that at the heart of Germanic society were the Männerbünde, the all-male war groups, where social ties among males were more important than social class and transcended the kinship group. Rewards for membership depended on competence in battle, and an important reward was sex obtained from captured females. Being a warrior was to be a man in the full sense of the word. Ruling and priestly functions were very closely related, as in early Republican Rome.[87] Kings could be killed if there was a bad year or bad harvest, and at times kings would offer themselves up in atonement, accepting responsibility for the fate of the group.[88]
Similar social class divisions have been noted by other scholars. Bente Magnus points to three different classes in traditional Scandinavian society, the thrall (slave, serf), the free farmer, and the earl.[89] Property was administered by individuals on behalf of the lineage, although by the Viking age (beginning ca. ad 800) “the power of the lineage over the land had diminished.”[90] Corroborating the upward mobility possible in these societies, there were slaves who could become free if they worked the land. In settlements, there was usually one farm that was superior to the surrounding farms, “suggesting some sort of dominance.”[91]
Another individualistic aspect of the Männerbünde that doubtless increased their dynamism was that inherited status counted for little. Around two-thirds of the wealth of the chief was buried or burned when he died, with the rest going to the living, so that even the sons of chiefs had to prove themselves by accumulating wealth and power. According to an Icelandic saga discussed by Hasenfratz, the sons of kings and earls could inherit land but not money. Money was buried with the father. Each had to prove himself in battle and raiding. “And even if sons inherited the lands, they were unable to sustain their status, if honour counted for anything, unless they put themselves and their men at risk and went into battle, thereby winning for himself, each in his turn, wealth and renown, and so following in the footsteps of his kinsmen.”[92] Again, we see the importance of fame and honor obtained by military accomplishment.
Sippe and Männerbünde. The Germanic Sippe refers to a group of freeborn people with blood ties; the concept does not apply to slaves. Marriages occurred within the Sippe, and endogamous marriage was common. Even brother-sister marriages are described in the sagas, and one set of gods, the Vanir, were allowed to marry siblings.
This suggests a strongly kinship-based society. However, there were ways in which the importance of kinship was de-emphasized. Children were often fostered out to families of higher rank, creating ties that were not based on kinship. Taking guests for up to three nights was an accepted custom, sometimes providing a wife or other female to the visitor. Gift-giving also cemented social ties and obligated receivers to give more than they were given. At times, a non-biological sense of kinship can be seen: In one saga, a man kills another man and is then forced to marry the decedent’s sister and name the child after the decedent![93]
The most important of these forces de-emphasizing kinship was the Männerbund itself because it cut across the Sippe and was based, not on kinship ties, but on territorial ties among men of the same age. The Männerbund was superior to the Sippe in the sense that it was the upholder of “censorious justice” if the familism of the Sippe got out of control.[94] (The Männerbund was taken up by National Socialism as the ideal social form, superseding the family and based on honor and duty.[95])
There were also Sippe-transcending institutions that originated as religious convocations that evolved into the Althing as a holy site where disputes between Sippe were ironed out, wergild paid, etc. Marriage outside the Sippe also occurred, sometimes leading to conflict with wife’s Sippe, because wife’s brothers felt an obligation to protect her. The conflicts engendered by this system may have been one reason Christianity was attractive to the ancient Germanics: it de-emphasized kinship obligations.[96]
Public punishment was meted out by a “sib[i.e., Sippe]-transcending legal community” (in Iceland, the Althing)—for outlawry, execution,[97] and for settling wergild claims. The Männerbünde would also exact Sippe-transcending punishment which could at times degenerate into terrorism.
While of undoubted importance, therefore, the kinship-based Sippe was subordinated to higher level institutions not based on kinship. Also suggesting the relative unimportance of the Sippe, David Herlihy notes that among the Germanic tribes, Sippe is “rarely encountered in the early sources.”[98] In short, “the Germanic Sippe ... was weakening and losing functions and visibility on the Continent very early in the Middle Ages”; on the other hand, Ireland “long clung to its archaic institutions”[99] (see discussion in Ch. 4).
Aristocratic Individualism in Ancient Greece
The free-market character of I-E society was inconsistent with despotic rule. If individuals are free to choose their leaders and defect from those who are inept or fail to reciprocate with generous gifts, then despotic rulers cannot arise. Despotism implies that others do not have freedom to pursue their interests. There is a vast difference between being first among equals and being a despot.
Both the society portrayed in Homer and Duchesne’s description of Greek culture of the Mycenaean period (1600–1100 bc) are in line with the aristocratic individualism hypothesis. Aristocrats are warriors who perform heroic deeds in search of immortal fame.[100] Government is not despotic but instead involves extensive discussion and argument about what to do. Kings acted after consultation with other aristocrats. For Achilles and other Greek heroes, fate was self-chosen and sometimes tragic. “There is also a spirit of overweening confidence in man’s capacity to strive, in the midst of moments of fear and doubt, against the most difficult obstacles.”[101] “The gods speak as if they were speaking to peers, ‘with chivalrous courtesy,’ offering their advice, telling them it is better to follow the gods, if they wish, while the heroes communicate and react to the gods without losing their freedom and honor.”[102]
Amazingly, Hippocrates (460–370 bc), the founder of medicine, saw Greeks as fundamentally different from the Persians in ways strikingly congruent with Duchesne’s thesis: “Europeans ... were independent, willing to take risks, aggressive and warlike, while Asians were peaceful to the point of lacking initiative, ‘not their own masters ... but ruled by despots’”[103]—another way of saying that their participation in the military was coerced, not voluntary.
I-E heroes in ancient Greece and elsewhere were individuals firs
t and foremost—men who distinguished themselves from others by their feats in pursuit of individual renown, as shown by these lines from Beowulf:
As we must all expect to leave / our life on this earth, we must earn some renown, /If we can before death; daring is the thing /for a fighting man to be remembered by. /... A man must act so / when he means in a fight to frame himself / a long lasting glory; it is not life he thinks of.[104]
Moreover, like the free-market military cultures based on voluntarily chosen leaders, the Western urban cultures of antiquity retained a free-market approach to other areas of culture, in particular with regard to belief systems (ideologies) and science. Thus in classical Greece (i.e., after the Homeric period),
the ultimate basis of Greek civic and cultural life was the aristocratic ethos of individualism and competitive conflict which pervaded [Indo-European] culture. Ionian literature was far from the world of berserkers but it was nonetheless just as intensively competitive. New works of drama, philosophy, and music were expounded in the first-person form as an adversarial or athletic contest in the pursuit of truth... . There were no Possessors of the Way in aristocratic Greece; no Chinese Sages decorously deferential to their superiors and expecting appropriate deference from their inferiors. The search for the truth was a free-for-all with each philosopher competing for intellectual prestige in a polemical tone that sought to discredit the theories of others while promoting one’s own.[105]
This underlines the individualistic nature of scientific endeavor. Scientific movements are highly permeable groups whose members are prone to defection if they find a better theory or if new data are uncovered—a free-market system of ideas. On the other hand, The Culture of Critique contrasts the Western individualist tradition of science with several twentieth-century intellectual movements composed of slavish followers centered around charismatic leaders who expounded dogmas that were not open to empirical disconfirmation.[106] Individuals convinced by their own judgments to adopt different theories or reject fundamental dogmas (e.g., the Freudian Oedipal complex) were simply expelled, typically in a torrent of invective; dissent was not tolerated. Such movements far more resembled authoritarian ingroups centered around a despot rather than individualist truth-seeking.
But despite the individualism of the ancient Greeks, they also displayed a greater tendency toward exclusionary (ethnocentric) attitudes than the Romans[107] or the Germanic groups that came to dominate Europe after the fall of the Western Empire (see below). In addition to a sense of belonging to the wider Greek culture, the Greeks had a strong sense of belonging to a particular city-state, and this belonging was rooted in a sense of common ethnicity deeply entwined with religious attitudes. The Greeks, unlike the Romans and despite their common language and culture, “never overcame the exclusionary nature of their institutions to form a lasting union.” [108]
The polis was thus both exclusionary (serving only citizens, typically defined by blood) and communitarian (subscribing to a citizen-soldier ideal under which all were expected to sacrifice for the whole). The city-state meant for the Greeks the actual people (they always called themselves “the Athenians,” “the Spartans”), their ancestors, and their gods: “this explains the patriotism of the ancients, a vigorous sentiment which was for them the supreme virtue and that which all the others culminated in”;[109] “The piety of the ancients was love of country.”[110] Guillaume Durocher:
From fairly early on, Athenian democracy became tinged with what Susan Lape calls a “racial ideology.”[111] Whereas Herodotus had argued that the Athenian population was the product of a mixing between Hellenic settlers and Pelasgian natives, the Athenians claimed to be racially pure in contrast with the other Greeks, having supposedly sprung from the Attic soil as true autochtones.[112]
Similarly, Sparta was essentially an ethnostate, with the highly xenophobic Spartans ruling over and enslaving a conquered people, the Helots, from whom they remained separate, with no intermarriage, for hundreds of years.[113]
Thus, Greek patriotism based on religious beliefs and a sense of blood kinship was in practice very much focused on the individual city, making those interests absolutely supreme, with little consideration for imperial subjects, allies, or fellow Greeks in general.
Aristocratic Individualism among the Germanic Peoples after the Fall of the Western Empire
As the Western Roman Empire decayed, the West was infused with new lifeblood from the Germanic branch of the I-E family.
It was the vigor, boldness, and the acquisitiveness of Germanic war-bands that kept the West alive. These lads were uncouth and unlettered, much given to quarrelsome rages, but they injected energy, daring, and indeed an uncomplicated and sincere love of freedom, a keen sense of honor and a restless passion for battle, adventure, and life.[114]
Even during the putative nadir of Western freedom, the medieval period, the reciprocity so fundamental to I-E culture could be seen: “The aristocratic principle of sovereignty by consent was the hallmark of feudal government. The king was not above the aristocracy; he was first among equals.”[115] Medieval society was a “society of estates”—“kingdoms, baronies, bishoprics, urban communes, guilds, universities, each with important duties and privileges.”[116]
Thus, although unquestionably hierarchical and even exploitative, medieval European societies had a strong sense that cultures ought to build a sense of social cohesion on the basis of reciprocity, so that for the most part, with the exception of slaves, even humble members near the bottom of the social hierarchy had a stake in the system. One might conceptualize this as an extension of the Männerbund philosophy whereby everyone had a stake in the success of the group. The ideal (and the considerable reality) is what Spanish historian Américo Castro labeled “hierarchic harmony.”[117]
The Visigothic Code in Spain illustrates the desire for a non-despotic government and for social cohesion that results from taking account of the interests of everyone (except slaves). Regarding despotism:
It should be required that [the king] make diligent inquiry as to the soundness of his opinions. Then, it should be evident that he has acted not for private gain but for the benefit of the people; so that it may conclusively appear that the law has not been made for any private or personal advantage, but for the protection and profit of the whole body of citizens. (Title I, II)[118]
And just as the Männerbünde had a high level of social cohesion through gift-giving by leaders so that everyone had a stake in military victory, social cohesion in Gothic society was seen as resulting from justice for all citizens and as motivating citizens to “strive against the enemy.” In individualistic societies citizens, see their self-interest as a stakeholder coinciding with the interest of the system as a whole. The wise king creates cohesion not by coercion, but by giving everyone a stake in the system:
Just laws are essential for social cohesion in the face of enemies. Without justice, people will not strive against the enemy. It’s not a matter of an abstract moral ideal, but a practical necessity... .
For the administration of the law is regulated by the disposition and character of the king; from the administration of the law proceeds the institution of morals, from the institution of morals, the concord of the citizens; from the concord of the citizens, the triumph over the enemy. So a good prince ruling well his kingdom, and making foreign conquests, maintaining peace at home, and overwhelming his foreign adversaries, is famed both as the ruler of his state and a victor over his enemies, and shall have for the future eternal renown; after terrestrial wealth, a celestial kingdom; after the diadem and the purple, a crown of glory; nor shall he then cease to be king, for when he relinquished his earthly kingdom, and conquered a celestial one, he did not diminish, but rather increased his glory.[119]
The prime exception was that slaves were not granted the rights associated with freemen. For example, slaves were not allowed to serve in the military, which was composed of freemen who had a stake in the system; concern about social cohe
sion did not apply to slaves.
The absence of despotism and the fundamental reciprocity at the heart of I-E culture can be seen in the legal code described in Njals Saga, which was written in the late thirteenth century and set between 960 and 1020 in pre-Christian Iceland.[120] This Icelandic system was based upon the legal system of Nordic countries, since the Norse had settled Iceland; it clearly reflects an individualist mindset. In this saga, Njal, a lawyer, attempts to mediate, arbitrate, and litigate controversies among Icelanders, and the reader is introduced to the legal system commonly existing in Scandinavia Europe approximately one millennium ago:
Lowly peasants could file suit against even powerful feudal lords and would get their day in court.
Process servers were used to summon defendants to court by orally stating the claims made against them—and the defendants would accept service by repeating the claims verbatim.
District courts would try cases, and if any party disagreed with the verdict, they could appeal to the Althing—a higher court—for review.
A court would only have jurisdiction over a defendant if that defendant engaged in conduct in that jurisdiction or paid homage to that jurisdiction’s “godi”—feudal lord.
Jurors would serve as factfinders, and parties could exercise peremptory challenges to excuse a certain number of prospective jurors from the trial for any reason or for no reason whatsoever.
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