...just a teaser: "A few of us can be Druids"

[Otto]

...just a teaser:

William T. Vollmann: "Rising Up and Rising Down - Some Thoughts on
Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means" (Abridgment)

Atomization and Hierarchy

(...)

The stage is set; history's curtain rises. Weather, war, debt,
disease, science, anti-Semitism, nepotism, lucky or expedient
marriages, primogeniture (or even inheritance generally, which Bakunin
saw as the principle perpetrator of inequality), career
specialization, topography, stupidity, arbitrary force and individual
ability now interrelate to make some accumulators more successful than
others. A few of us can be Druids, some will be knights; the rest must
be commoners.

Well-meaning Plato, envisioning utopia, depends on command mechanisms
to achieve what fraternity and jealousy did among the Huron. A
productive surplus nourishes his ease. He sits writing while slaves
and metics flash to and fro. This is class. Millenia later, a
capitalist archeologist writes with odious but justified smugness that
"this societal division into 'haves' and 'have-nots' is the
quintessential characteristic of civilization."

CLASS DIVISIONS AMONG THE GAULS (FIRST CENTURY B.C.)

The Official view

DRUIDS - Chieftains, priest-magistrates
KNIGHTS - Warriors, highborn lords
COMMONERS - "Treated almost as slaves"

Caesar implies that similar distinctions exist among nomadic and
sedentary tribes. The proportions shown are assumed; in particular,
the number of Druids might be much smaller relative to the Knights.

Source: Caesar, Gallic War, pp. 335-41 (vi, 13-15)

(185-86)

- - - - - -

When the Land Is Gone

(...)

A Korean historian writes in a monograph about his country that the
introduction of the iron sickle into rice-harvesting greatly improved
productivity; but "doubtless," he says, the ruling class got most of
the benefit. "Accordingly, the gap between the rich and the poor must
have been further widened."

(187-88)